Chương 171: Chapter 169: Cave trolls and their friends

While it does drag out the combat, it doesn't make it last forever. We're all doing a lot more damage than they're recovering from. I would've thought that ten hit points per second would mean it was almost impossible to kill someone, but that doesn't seem to be the case. We carve through the cave trolls pretty quickly. I do get to the point where my stamina is starting to drain, but never to the point where it outdoes my own regeneration.

Just to be safe, we make sure to hit each of them with fire after they go down. The last thing I want is for them to pop back up and start another fight after we've finished them off. It wouldn't be that dangerous, but it would definitely be annoying. You have defeated cave troll x6 you gain (324, 000/5) 64, 800 experience. That's not enough for me to level, but it does get me past the halfway point. And, surprisingly, it does turn out to be enough for Vincent to level up.

He's now at level forty eight, and is still under three thousand hit points.

"I don't need a lot of health," he says.

"I need a lot of mana. Health is for you guys." I know he basically just called us his meat shields, but he's not exactly wrong, so I don't call him on it. I'd rather he have more points in mana and better spells, too. Speaking of better spells, Mab's Rage levels up again, finally. It now lasts another thirty seconds, giving it a three and a half minute duration. With my willpower being 165, that's almost an extra five thousand points of damage.

I don't know if we're going to level up getting through this mountain, but from the sounds coming down the cave ahead of us, I think it's pretty likely. There's still no light at the end of the tunnel, which means it still has a fair distance to go. And there are probably more monsters waiting for us. I wonder if there will be more cave trolls, or if we'll run into something truly dangerous. It's weird to say that. Cave trolls are truly dangerous.

They have more than fifty thousand hit points, they hit for almost eight hundred with each blow, and they regenerate six hundred health a minute. If we had run into even one of those things back in the tutorial level, it would probably have slaughtered all five of us. It's always weird to look back and see how far we've come, how much we've accomplished, and to realize that it's such a short time. I was in college for four years. During that time, I took maybe thirty five different classes.

Maybe more than that, I don't remember. That meant hundreds of pages of papers, an endless number of tests, and more lectures than I could remember if I tried. I have so many memories of college, even as long ago as it was, and yet I look back on how smart I thought I was, and how stupid I actually was, with wonder. This is like that. It's been less than six months since the world ended. But every day has been something else, something major.

We've formed memories from all of our accomplishments, and it feels like we've actually done something with that time. Time hasn't been flying by because it's been so packed with activity. It's been so full of everything that this world has to offer. We've lived more in this past few months than I think I have in my entire life before this point. I really do see the start of the tutorial as the beginning of a new life, and I feel like I've done almost as much since then as I did before.

"Do you guys feel like we've done more in the past six months than we have in the years before?" I ask, not wanting to keep this line of thinking to myself.

"Sometimes," El says.

"I feel like a wholly different person. It's hard to remember what life used to be like."

"I used to waste so much time watching television," Vincent says.

"I was just numbing my brain, passing the time. It felt like I was waiting to die sometimes."

"I get that," Gigi says.

"I always felt like I was looking for something, waiting for something to happen. I don't feel that way anymore."

"That's part of why I want to be a god," Ash says.

"There's so much to see now, so much to do. All the world is at our fingertips. I still don't get why you guys aren't excited about the possibility."

"Because the thing that gives life value is the fact that it ends," El says.

"That's bullshit," Ash says.

"The thing that gives life value is the experiences we have. The memories we form. The bonds we establish. You guys make life worth living, whether it ends or not." That's a good point. With the right people, maybe immortality is survivable. Maybe it would be a good thing. I keep looking at eternity like it's some kind of hell. No matter how good it is at times, it will eventually get old. It will grow stale, boring.

"Maybe the gods can move on to something else when they get bored," Vincent suggests.

"Maybe there is no end to eternity. There could always be another step forward, another door to go through."

"Another door?" Gigi asks.

"It's something I once heard about Studio 54," Vincent says.

"You know, that club from the sixties? Apparently, the thing that made it so popular was that there was always another door to go through. If you were popular enough, if you were pretty enough, rich enough, famous enough, whatever. There would be a door you could go through, another part of the club, that was somehow more exclusive and therefore better. The theory was that there was eventually one door that no one could go through, no matter what. And that door led to the greatest thing ever.

Not that anyone ever saw it. They had to just dream about it." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"What dreams are made of," I say.

"So you think that maybe there is more past being a god?"

"Shouldn't there be? I mean, isn't that how we have always measured value? We always want something more, something better. Anything, no matter how good it is, will eventually become boring and commonplace. We need something to strive for, always. It's the human condition."

"But we're not human anymore," Ash points out. Vincent reaches up and touches his horns.

"Yes, true. I keep forgetting." Our conversation is interrupted by another group of cave trolls. There are only three this time, and they don't really pose any kind of threat to us. Gigi and Ash take one of them down, El takes another, and I engage with the third. Vincent, meanwhile, casts various fire spells all around us. The trolls don't stand much of a chance. Past the second group of trolls, the tunnel starts to curve a lot more sharply.

It doesn't seem like water would flow this way, and the tunnel stops looking like it's carved from flowing water. This must be another cave that somehow became attached to the first one. Maybe after an avalanche or something. Do avalanches do that? The second cave is much more steep. There should be steps, but it's still just natural cave. I would carve steps if I were to stay here. Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll become a hermit of the mountain.

Carve steps, set up traps, and judge whether future aspirants are worthy of divinity. That sounds super boring. Never mind. We find another of Amanda's victims as we go up this steeper slope. It looks like a stalactite. Or stalagmite. Hard to tell, since it's lying on its side in a puddle of brackish black blood. For the first time, I'm glad she's in front of us. I wouldn't have even considered looking out for living spikes of stone dropping down on us or attacking us as we moved past them.

The creature on the floor smells like the rest of the cave around us. Even the blood smells like limestone. There's no real way we could have known they were there if not for Amanda. Cave spike. Mythic advanced monster, level 51. HP: 51, 000/51, 000. Our first one does drop down from above, but we all manage to dive out of the way before it hits the ground. I roll back to my feet with my sword and dagger already in hand, and manage to knock aside a swipe it makes with an arm that seems to be made of gravel.

My sword passes through the arm, but the arm isn't severed. The gravel just stays up like I didn't do anything at all. But I did do something. I did some damage. Unfortunately, not very much. Normally, my sword strikes do about 500 damage. This one only did 75. That's more armor than the beach guardian, I think. I step back from the swinging arms of gravel and see if maybe spells will be more effective. I hit it with a Fire Bolt, but the spell just splashes off the creature, leaving a tiny scorch mark.

I think back to the creature that Amanda killed. Maybe that will give me a clue on how to defeat this thing. There were definitely score marks from her swords, but they were somewhat shallow. She clearly did cut it up, but that wasn't the entirety of her strategy. What else did she do? I think there were some wet marks on it, from more than just its own blood. So she did something that involved water. Maybe ice? I fire an Ice Spike. I haven't used that spell in a long time, mostly because of its low damage.

But it also has a low mana cost. The spike slams into the stalactite monster and does the full 280 points of damage that I expect it to. But it also makes the creature stagger a little bit, giving the three women surrounding it a chance to wail on it for a few seconds. I look over at Vincent, ready to tell him to use ice spells, but he's already seen the effect, and is throwing spears of ice at the monster. Every time ice makes contact, the creature freezes for just a second.

I can only cast my spell every five seconds, and it seems like Vincent can only throw a spear about as frequently, but that means for two out of every five seconds, the creature is unmoving. And that means that the others can do a lot of damage to it, even with it's armor being higher than 400. Fifty one thousand hit points is a lot when you're only doing about three thousand a minute. But Vincent is also doing about five thousand a minute, and the three melee fighters are doing another six between them.

So it still takes about four minutes to get through the single creature, but we do manage. The real trouble comes when we enter the next chamber. Inside, there are four cave trolls. And six of the cave spikes. This is going to be a much more difficult battle. When I use Stinging Defense on the cave spikes, my strikes don't make it through their armor, so the ability is effectively just a waste of stamina. I keep using it, hoping to level it up some more, but it doesn't actually do anything.

Their strikes flow around my blades, the gravel arms maintaining their consistency without any real difficulty. Vincent starts a fire storm in half of the chamber. It doesn't catch any of the monsters in the storm, but it does stop the cave trolls from going around the rest of us and attacking him. They are clearly afraid of fire, and the storm of flames is enough to keep them at bay. It would be a perfect time to use Mab's Rage, but it's not off cooldown yet.

There's still an hour and four minutes before I can use it again. But that means that in four minutes, Vincent will be able to use it. His cooldowns are cut in half because of a talent of his. So we'll get a little bit of time where the cave spikes won't be able to move at all.

"Everyone get ready," I say as I keep trying to keep the creatures at bay.

"In four minutes, Vincent can freeze all the spikes with Mab's Rage. We won't have long, but we can do a lot of damage in that time." I get hit by one of the swinging arms of gravel. It does 398 damage. The same amount that the cave trolls do. Eight hundred damage before my defense comes into play. The only saving grace of these cave spikes is that they're slow.

Even though I'm currently facing off with three of them, they're only hitting me once every ten seconds or so, so I'm only taking about 2400 damage per minute from them. And with all my allies here helping me flank them, I'm doing double damage. So instead of doing seventy eight damage, I'm doing 578 damage. Apparently, the flanking damage doubles before the defense comes into play. That's good. I'd be frustrated if I was still only doing about a hundred and fifty damage with each hit.

The problem of this fight is that the cave trolls keep retreating as soon as they take any real damage, and the cave spikes move in to fill in the gaps. They're coordinated, making us waste our time fighting against something that prevents most of our damage while the ones that we can actually hurt take the time to heal. So while I'm doing about seven thousand damage a minute to the cave spikes, the cave trolls look like they're going to be here for the long haul.