Chương 176: Chapter 174: The rock eater

It's a nerve wracking walk through the crowd. They only give us about five feet of space, so we have to walk single file. And they don't lower their weapons. Every step, I wonder if they're going to change their minds and swarm us, collapsing the pathway and crushing us between their two flanks. From the looks of them, there are at least a hundred of the creatures. They might be able to take us out if they swarm. But they don't swarm. I keep Mab's Rage ready, but I never have to cast it.

They let us walk through their village, meandering us around their tents and leading us out to a small cave in the back of the cavern. I see that they have fields of mushrooms to provide themselves with food, and several creatures that seem to be some kind of livestock. Mostly goat like creatures. No dire goats, thankfully. I don't have time for sight seeing, so I don't get much more than a basic impression of this village. They seem peaceful enough. Maybe the arrow trick scared them.

Maybe my confidence persuaded them. I don't know what it was, I just know that we make it through the while village and into the tunnel. And then they push a huge rock into the mouth of the tunnel, sealing it behind us, and blocking us off from their village.

"Can't say I blame them for that," I say, looking at the big rock. It's not a perfect fit, but it's pretty tight. They clearly had the rock prepared ahead of time. You have defeated the hob village! You gain (50, 000/5) 10, 000 experience. That's almost insulting. If we'd stayed and slaughtered those creatures, we would each have gotten more than half a million experience. It would've been enough for all of us to level at least once, possibly twice.

To only give us each ten thousand experience is almost infuriating.

"You did the right thing," Gigi says, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"There were children." El is a bit grumpy about missing out on the experience, but she does nod in agreement.

"There's always next time," she says.

"I'm glad you gave them a chance." We move down the new tunnel, this time with Ash's light to guide us. The walls are surprisingly smooth, the tunnel almost a perfect circle. And the walls are almost entirely clean. The fungus from before is much more sparse, and the glow isn't enough to be able to see all that well. Also, I think Ash secretly wants to alert our enemies. She wants them to be ready to fight us. She wants a battle. I can't say I blame her.

Over the last few hours we've come across two potential battle sites, and haven't been able to fight in either one. We've been ready, on edge, all this time. We might appreciate avoiding battles where we can, but the body still gets ready for them. The adrenaline still floods our systems, and the stress hormone still rises. To constantly be unable to use those chemicals flowing through our blood is frustrating. We need something to take that frustration out on. It's not long before we find just the thing.

Rock eater. Legendary rare elite serpent, level 60. HP: 300, 000/300, 000. It's a snake. A really big snake. It's about the width of the tunnel, in fact. And it explains some of the smoothness of the walls. It's coiled over itself a few times, so I can't quite make out how long it is, but I'm guessing it's at least forty feet long when stretched out. It hisses at us, baring large fangs that are almost certainly filled with venom.

The rock eater lashes forward with its bite, moving almost too fast to see, and slams into Ash's raised shield. Ash slides back a few feet from the force of the impact, and I hear her grunt. The next thing I know, El is diving forward past the head and already slashing at the coiled body of the serpent. The battle is quickly joined, and I make sure to flank with El before slashing with a probing attack. Not using any abilities yet; I need to know how much armor this thing has. I do 754 damage.

Which means it has about two hundred and fifty armor. That means it will reduce every hit by that amount. Which is pretty much the same as giving it a whole lot more hit points. As if three hundred thousand wasn't enough! I stab it with my dagger but my dagger only does 62 damage. I don't get the flanking bonus with the dagger, apparently. The creature's coils move pretty rapidly, and they pulse suddenly, slashing out at El and at me. I get my buckler in place just in time, but I still take 1, 093 damage.

So it can hit us with more than just the head and the tail. That's good to know. Over my shoulder, I hear Gigi and Ash dealing with the snake's head. They keep getting hit as the head slams into them again and again, trying to bite them, or possibly to swallow them whole. Could it do that? It's big enough, I think. And snakes can usually hyper extend their jaws. I hope that doesn't happen. But if it does, I'm pretty sure Gigi will cut her way free. Maybe that would kill the snake all at once.

Maybe it wouldn't be the worst possibility. I don't hear him cast the spell, but when the snake starts to move much more slowly, I'm pretty sure that's Vincent's handy work. The snake slows down by almost a quarter of its speed, and that means the slashing spin of its coils is going to happen much less often. I start to learn the snake's timing a little bit better, and I'm able to hop back out of the way just before it does that spin again. I see that El has the timing down too.

It's about a five second cycle, it seems, between attacks. And while that is time that we can't attack it, it doesn't really slow down our assault all that much. Normally, I'm able to get an attack off every two seconds or so. Faster than that becomes almost impossible to control my movements, but two to three seconds is a pace I can keep up while still being defensive. With having to leap back from the snake's attacks so often, I can only hit it every three seconds or so.

But that still means that I can do about fifteen thousand points of damage per minute. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. If El is doing the same level of damage that I am, then the two of us will be able to kill the rock eater in about twenty minutes. We both have the stamina for that, though it might be a little bit close. Thankfully, it seems like Gigi and Ash are doing their fair share of damage as well. So maybe it'll take fifteen minutes, or even ten.

Then I hear Vincent cast another spell, and suddenly I'm doing the full thousand damage per hit that I expect to do. He cast that spell that strips away armor, that makes the enemy vulnerable to our attacks. I wish I had that spell. Maybe Soften will have that effect? It takes ten seconds to cast, but it might strip away ten percent of their armor? Not worth it. I do so much damage in ten seconds that it wouldn't be worth just stripping away 25 points of armor. Vincent has done ten times that much.

And he can keep casting the spell when it wears off. That's way better than slowing it down. Though to be fair, he is doing both. He's got it low on armor and slowed. I didn't know he could maintain both of them at the same time. This is pretty awesome. He may not be doing damage himself, but he's allowing the four of us to each do an extra two hundred and fifty with every hit. So that's like contributing a thousand points of damage when all four of us hit. That's huge.

I might be projecting about Vincent's feelings. He might be totally confident in himself and in his place within the party. Maybe he doesn't feel like we see him as a hanger on, as an option, and not as part of the core group. He might not even think about that kind of thing. But I do. And I would if I were in his position. I think that way every time we have a battle where I can just stay back and use my bow. I know that I'm contributing, but I don't feel necessary when I'm not up in the melee.

I know that the rest of them have traveled without me, so I know that I could be seen as just a pleasant addition, or an option that they don't really need. I assume Vincent has it worse than I do, since he's spent so much more time without the rest of us. But I don't know. I could just be imagining it. I think I'll make it a point to tell him how valuable his contributions are anyway. It may not be all that needed, but it might make him feel good anyway. There's no cost to giving compliments.

And if it is something that he worries about, it might reassure him. As I'm thinking about that, I miss the timing and take another thousand point hit from the snake coils. I growl deep in my throat, more annoyed with myself than with the hit, and turn my focus back to doing damage, to cutting the coils away until this rock eater is just a stain on the cavern floor. Two more minutes pass. I take a few hits from the coils as the creature starts to adjust its pattern, knocking my Shell down to about ten thousand.

But in that time, I do forty thousand points of damage myself. The thing started at three hundred thousand, but judging by its health bar, it has to be getting close to the halfway mark already. Forty thousand from me, forty thousand from El, and forty thousand from Gigi and Ash would be a hundred and twenty thousand. Plus the forty or so we did in the first minute of battle would put it past the halfway mark. It's health bar is above half. That means someone isn't doing as much damage as I think they are.

Or the thing is regenerating with a quickness that the cave trolls couldn't match. No, I don't think that's the case. The health bar is moving steadily downward. Suddenly, the whole snake stiffens. Then it starts to droop as it collapses to the ground, lifeless. Did someone just do a hundred and fifty thousand points of damage? I didn't use Killing Blow. Did someone else? Did it actually work? I see what happened when the others join us in the chamber. Gigi is absolutely covered in gore and what seems like saliva.

There's also a broken fang sticking out of her shield. She makes a full body shiver as if grossed out.

"It swallowed me," she says. She continues to wriggle out the ick for a few more seconds before finally casting Refresh on herself, then carefully stepping out of the ring of grime and gore that forms around her feet.

"Did you stab it in the brain?" El asks.

"I don't know," Gigi says.

"I stabbed it everywhere I could. I basically cut my way out of its throat."

"I was wondering if that would happen," I say.

"Sorry it had to happen to you." Gigi shrugs.

"It's okay. It's probably best that it happened to me, actually. I don't know if Ash's mace would've been up to the job." That's probably true. Ash would have just pummeled it from inside. Might still have killed it, but probably wouldn't have gotten herself free. You have defeated rock eater. You gain (300, 000/5) 60, 000 experience. It's a little bit closer to the next level. It's also a good place to stop and camp for the night.

We've got plenty of meat to cook, the cavern is pretty big, and there are two tunnels leading out of here. So we are going to have to either guess or split up. Whatever the case, I'm tired from a very long day of moving through and up this mountain, and I want to take a break. No one argues, though Ash does cast a furtive glance towards the two passages leading out of here. She goes over and looks down both of them while El sets up the tent and while I build the fire.

We'll need it for cooking, but I don't think we'll need it to keep warm. The temperature in here is still pretty pleasant, all things considered. It's not stifling heat, which is good, but it's definitely not chilly enough to need a fire. As I finish with the fire, Ash comes over to talk to me.

"Once the fire is steady, can you go check out those two tunnels and see if you can pick up any sign of Amanda? I didn't see anything, but you're a better tracker than I am."

"Sure thing," I say as I feed more twigs into the growing flame. A minute or so later, I find myself standing at the entrance to the two caves. One of them is darker than the other. It also slopes downwards just a bit as the passageway curves out of sight. That said, there's something a few feet down the path that draws my attention. It's a broken string. The string was about a foot off the ground, and passed all the way across the passage.

I move closer to examine it, and I see that one end of the rope leads into a crack in the wall. Tracing the crack upwards, I see a place where it widens, right at about chest height. And peering into the crack, I think I see a crossbow. Thankfully, not a loaded one. That would suck. I'd probably be able to use that jewel that Vincent has. But no bolt comes flying into my eye. I look around the tunnel. I don't see any bolts or any remains of anyone. But someone came through here and set off this trap.

Which means that this tunnel will probably have more traps. I do find some blood. But just a drop of it. So little, like someone immediately healed from the wound but not before a tiny droplet got out. I bend down and sniff at the blood. It smells a little bit sweet. Where have I smelled this before? I think this might be elf blood. Which means Amanda probably came down this tunnel. I go check the other tunnel. It is better lit, with tons of those glowing mushrooms gripping the walls.

And it very clearly goes upward, the slope steep enough to be obvious but not so steep as to be all that difficult to go up. Why would Amanda choose the other path? Maybe because of the trap? Maybe there's something down there that she had to recover? I don't know if she just went down the darker path and continued following it or if she backtracked and then went down the other path. She doesn't exactly leave a trail most of the time.

No footprints, no marks on the walls, nothing that makes it easy to tell which path she took.