Chương 99: Penicillium - Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight The last room on the second floor was... I wasn't sure if the word ruin was correct for it. The room was mostly intact. The floor was worn, and there were spaces where water was leaking past the brickwork covering every wall, but otherwise, it looked and felt like a very old, very poorly maintained building of some sort.

"Walls," George said. I blinked, then looked around more carefully. His warning wasn't without purpose, some of the walls, especially next to some nooks and crannies where it would be harder to see, were hiding Wall-Crawlers.

"Just walk down the middle," Cavendish said.

"They won't jump at us?" Tyro asked.

"They have a range," Grace said.

"And they're kinda slow when they're not jumping at your face." I made sure to stay in the middle of the group. One of those things weighed half as much as I did, even soaking-wet (which, annoyingly, I still was). If one of them crashed into me there was no way I'd stay on my feet. Only one spider tried to jump someone, and they chose William. He spun around so fast I couldn't see more than a blur and planted a bolt in the monster while it was still in mid-air.

"Damnation," he muttered as he tore the bolt out, saw that it was bent in the middle, then tossed it aside. The centre of the room had a long staircase in it, one that seemed to go on for a long ways in near complete darkness until, at the very bottom, there was a faint and distant light. Grace lit a small lantern with a mirrored back and George pulled out a candle on a little cup-like holder. It was enough light to see the steps by.

"No traps on the steps?" I asked.

"Never," Tyro said from right next to me.

"Boss rooms don't usually have traps, and the passages between floors are always trap-free."

"That doesn't mean that they're easy," Phillipe said.

"Some are dangerous in their own special ways, but they don't have traps in them. Not even in dungeons that are particularly trap-heavy."

"This one isn't?" I asked.

"Oh, it's nothing compared to some," George said.

"A few pitfalls? Maybe some spikes on the ground, a few trip-wire traps? This place is child's play."

"Ditz is generally a good place for new delvers to cut their teeth," Cavendish said.

"Good idea bringing the kid here."

"That's the idea, yes," Phillipe said.

"This dungeon's a safe one?" I asked. Grace laughed.

"Yeah. I mean, the worst challenge is... what, those golems a few floors down? They're slow-moving though. Otherwise it's pretty much goblins and a dozen varieties of spiders all the way down. If you're not... what's the word for afraid of spiders?"

"Arachnophobia," William provided.

"Yeah, if you're not arachnophobic, then there's not much worth fighting in here. I've been to dungeons where entire floors are huge forests filled with really nasty monsters."

"City Sixteen's swamp dungeon," George said. I listened to them while walking down the steps. My legs were burning a little and we were only halfway, and it was going down. I wasn't looking forward to climbing back up.

"I heard of that one," William said.

"Poisons all the way, right?"

"It has these frog-people monsters," George said.

"They use every sort of biological poison you could think of, and with half the floors being covered in swamp you don't know you're stepping into a lancet until it's through your foot and injecting you full of toxins. Nasty, nasty place. And the traps are complicated. Half of them are designed to only go off while you're disarming them, and even then, they're nearly invisible."

"Any interesting stuff in there?" I asked.

"Like, I don't know, mushrooms?"

"Huh? Yeah, I guess. Everything down there has its own flavour of lethal. Half of it will kill you if you just touch it." I made a mental note to visit City Sixteen one day. Maybe not the dungeon itself, but if I could hire an expedition to fetch some mushrooms for me... oh yeah, that sounded really nice. My day-dreaming ended as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I reached into my pack and pulled out my maps, wincing as I found the paper a little soggy.

It was real thick paper though, and while the ink had run a little, it was still perfectly legible and I didn't think it would tear or anything. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Glancing around at the room we'd entered, I was able to confirm that we were at the top left of the map. The space was, in fact, entirely round.

Columns jutted out of the walls and formed evenly spaced arches all around the room that met in the centre where a chandelier hung down from above. It was lit, a dozen candles flickering weakly high above. Individually they probably didn't provide much in terms of lighting, but all together... well, it still wasn't much, but it was enough to see by. The room looked like a reading space. There were crumbling, rotted desks left here and there, and a few shelves with the soggy remains of books in them.

"Are those readable?" I asked.

"Nope," Grace said.

"They're pretty much junk. Some folk have translated them, what you can read anyway, and it's mostly just gospel about one god or another."

"Huh," I said. Were dungeons how gods communicated with their followers? Or... some of them, maybe? I had to be honest, I didn't pay very much attention to religious affairs. I'd overheard a thing or two, but it seemed that while gods were definitely a thing, their impact on the average person's day-to-day life was rather minimal at best. Probably for the best.

"Next room's a pain in the ass," Cavendish said.

"No avoiding it, we're going to have to fight through. After that it's pretty smooth sailing for a while. Check your gear everyone, last chance to make ready before we need to head on out."

"What's the next room like?" Tyro asked.

"Imagine a million angry goblins," Grace said.

"She's exaggerating," Nathan added.

"Thirty of them, at most. All you need to do is kill a dozen and the rest scamper off. Nice thing about fighting goblins is that they're all cowards."

"Formation's going to be me, Nathan and Phillipe at the front. William, George, Grace, Tyro, you're at the rear," Cavendish said. He paused, gave me a look, then added.

"Ginger too. If any of the smaller ones slip by, show them that little knife of yours, huh?"

"Sure thing," I said with a mock salute. He nodded and checked his own gear. Phillipe and a couple of the others removed their backpacks to unlimber themselves for the fight. I was volunteered by Grace to be the one to carry their things for the moment, which was easier said than done. Still, I didn't complain. I liked feeling useful, even if I suspected that was Grace's way of keeping me out of the fighting and out of trouble, maybe as a strange apology for earlier.

We moved to the end of the round room, where there was an entrance into the next area. Unlike any of the previous floors, this one had a doorway blocking the exit. George stepped to the side, and the others got ready, then the trap-finder tore the doors open and everyone stepped up and plugged the gap. The room beyond was large.

Some sort of dining hall, if I had to guess, with rotting tables converted into goblin huts and a dais at the rear where I could imagine an ancient king dining as he looked over his subjects. Now the place was converted into a small goblin city, with tents of ripped up tarps and a few firepits made of loose masonry where mouldy books were being used as fuel. The banging of the doors alerted the goblins, and the response was almost immediate.

One of them, a larger one than any I'd seen so far, charged with grubby, nail-tipped hands extended. Nathan casually bashed him in the face with the edge of his shield, placed a foot on the goblin's chest, then rammed his sword between his ribs. Others were quick to join, some picked up wooden torches, others had long, crude spears. I couldn't decide if I'd rather run away or start flinging some of my more fun mushrooms over the heads of my allies. But... no, I couldn't do that, it would give too much away.

A second goblin went down, smashed aside by Phillipe's hammer, then Cavendish stabbed a third and punted it into its friends. Grace snuck a quick jab between the two guys ahead of her, sending a goblin gurgling to its death. From the looks of it, they didn't need my help at all.