Chương 62: Chapter 63: Delving a dungeon

When we finally get to the dungeon, it's early afternoon the next day. The entrance to the dungeon is a doorway from an ancient ruin that you just walk through, and you end up inside the dungeon. It's like a time portal. As soon as we step through, we find ourselves in a corridor lined with extinguished torches. I look around to see if anyone is having trouble seeing, but it doesn't look like anyone is. Ash's eyes even glow just a tiny bit, making her look even more demonic. We set up into our old formation.

El in front, Gigi and Ash to either side of her, Vincent and me in the back to provide ranged support. We start walking down the corridor, stopping as it goes into a large open chamber. And there in the chamber, we see the first monsters of the dungeon. Giant scorpion. Uncommon rare elite monster, level 19. HP: 4, 750/4, 750. There is a swarming pile of them, and they quickly start charging at us. I unleash a Rapid Shot, dealing 1446 damage to one of them.

That's enough to lower one of them by about half their health after bleed. I consider casting Mab's Rage, but I want to see what else we're going to fight, and how the girls handle the scorpions. The wave of giant scorpions crashes up against Ash's large kite shield and get pushed back. She screams something and her mace starts to glow a cold white light, smashing the scorpion carapace with every blow.

El is swinging her axes with great ability, the two axes moving almost independent of one another as she slashes aside a stinger with one axe and cuts apart a claw with another. And Gigi is swatting aside claws with her shield and stabbing between carapace plates with her sword. I don't think there's need to cast the spell yet. I keep shooting, doing about 250 damage with every arrow, slowly whittling down the life force of the scorpions as the girls chop and crush them to pieces.

Vincent casts a spell that has lightning striking among the scorpions that aren't quite up and engaged with the group, steadily stripping away hit points to make them easier prey when then do get in range. It takes us maybe ten minutes to clear the room of scorpions. And as we do, I spot the generator and start shooting at it. Giant scorpion generator. Rare rare elite generator, level 21. HP: 10, 240/10, 500. Another scorpion comes out while we are destroying the generator, but just one.

Soon enough, we're standing alone in the room, surrounded by scorpion corpses. Ash holds her mace in a position of prayer and casts a spell. It takes her almost twenty seconds to cast, but when she finishes, I watch the wounds on her and on Gigi just close up, like film running backwards. El I don't think took any actual damage; her Shell, whatever level it is, providing enough hit points for her to survive the battle unscathed. You have defeated giant scorpion x17 and giant scorpion generator.

You gain (91, 250/5) 18, 250 experience.

"Everyone good?" Ash asks, looking around. I'm busy harvesting the poison glands from the scorpions. I'm pretty sure there's a hunter quest for those. But one by one, everyone agrees that they are good to go.

"I'm good," I say.

"Just harvesting from the corpses." My animal harvesting goes up to 17, and I soon have a dozen scorpion poison glands in my spatial bag. There are five doors leading out of this big room with all the scorpions in it. We go to the first door and I take a good long look at the door. I'm looking for a pressure plate in front of the door, or scorch marks on the floor around the door. I look for evidence of spears coming out of the ceiling or if the floor will break away when some sort of support is removed.

Basically, I'm looking for any kind of trap that might be on the door. As I do so, my detect traps goes up to 4, but I don't find anything. I take that to mean that the door is not trapped. It's also not locked.

"I forgot how useful it was to have a rogue type," Ash says.

"Usually we just power through the traps if there are any."

"That's how I got two levels of detect trap," El says helpfully.

"I just set off so many of them that I learned what they look like." That tells me that they definitely stopped and did some adventuring on the way back to Elmspire. I can't really blame them; I gained fifty four levels and died once in the time it took them to get back. I can't blame them for stopping off on the way back and getting some treasure. Inside the room are barrels filled with ice and fish. Plenty to eat, if we trust the food we find in a dungeon, but nothing worth looting.

None of us partake, and we're soon on to door number two. The second door is trapped, but it's nothing big and flashy. I just notice that there's a little needle on the handle, ready to stab someone's finger right where they would most naturally grab it. I'm guessing it's poison, but I don't want to check to be sure. I take out my pocket tool and use the wire cutter to cut off the needle right where it comes out of the handle. I then have to pick the lock, which doesn't take long.

I get a level of disarm traps for the needle, but my pick lock stays the same. I guess that makes sense; it was an easy lock. Not like the lock on a treasure chest. It barely took me any time at all to get the door open. The lock was more like a suggestion that was meant to slow someone down rather than an actual security measure. The real security measure was the poison needle. Inside this room there are bottles of potions.

It's a small closet, and many of the bottles are broken, but there are still quite a few that are intact. The only question is what the potions actually do. I can tell that there are three basic types of potion on the shelves. One of them is thick and red, moving with the consistency of paint when I go to swirl the bottle. Another is a sparkly gold that swirls well and looks pretty, probably with the consistency of water.

And the third bottle is a softly glowing blue color that is thicker than the sparkly gold but thinner than the red. That's all there is to tell them apart. They're all different viscosity, and they're all different colors. There are no labels, and the system is no help identifying them.????? Potion. Great.

"Well, what are the odds that they're poisonous?" Vincent asks.

"I mean, they were locked up for a reason. Maybe they're health potions. Aren't health potions always red?"

"So is blood," El says.

"For all we know, these are bottles of vampire blood, and drinking them will make us bound to that vampire's will."

"Why would a vampire keep those in a closet?" Gigi asks.

"In case curious adventurers came by to drink them!" El says.

"That's kind of thin," Gigi says.

"They're clearly health, mana, and stamina potions," Vincent says.

"The only question is which is which." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"We don't know that they're beneficial," Ash says.

"They might be spoiled." I swirl one of the gold potions again, enjoying the sparkly amber liquid. It looks like it has glitter in it.

"I don't think they're spoiled," I say.

"I bet the blue one is mana," Vincent says.

"Blue is always mana."

"Maybe drinking them will let us identify them," Gigi says.

"For good or ill."

"The worst they can do is kill us," I say.

"And we're already well past the point of that mattering. If we die, we'll just level back up."

"But that'll take forever," El says.

"Or do you have a bunch of quests ready to turn in?" That's a good point.

"Let's take them with, and I'll test them out after we clear the dungeon. That way, if I die, I'll at least have that quest to turn in." And hopefully the one for monster generators. There might be two more in this dungeon. And if I have those two quests, I can get pretty high level just from turning them in. Maybe enough to offset the loss of stat points. I put four of each potion into my bag. There are still two or three of each one, and Vincent takes the remainders for his own bag.

Maybe he's willing to experiment too. And it's a good thing he is; I hadn't considered that the potions might react differently to our blood makeup. He's a demon blood. Maybe some magics work better on him, maybe some have the opposite effect that they're supposed to. I'd hate to find out that a potion gives me health, and then have him use it when he really needs the health and end up dying because it's poisonous to demon blooded. That would suck.

The third door is not trapped or locked, but there is something on the other side. I can hear them moving around, adjusting their position. Waiting for us. Vincent steps in front of the door and summons a ball of swirling fire. It grows bigger and brighter in between his hands. First it's the size of a softball, then a basketball, and eventually the size of a ball you could sit on and do yoga or something with. As it gets that big, he gives me a nod, and I open the door.

Vincent fires the ball of fire into the room beyond, and it explodes, charring everything inside. There are screeches, but they seem to be of anger rather than pain. Undead Warrior. Rare elite undead, level 16. HP: 3400/4000. An incredibly impressive spell, if you think about it. He did six hundred damage to every one of the undead in the room, taking them all by surprise.

And considering how many of them there are in this room, the fact that he was able to do six hundred damage each really puts that spell in the high tier for amount of damage dealt. I don't have anything that could do that much damage total, let alone spread out among so many targets. Other than Mab's Rage, and that damage doesn't happen all at once. We stand in the doorway and let the undead warriors come to us. El and Gigi end up pulling out bows and shooting over Ash's shoulders.

Ash stands in the doorway, an armored force of nature that will not be denied, smashing back the undead with the casual swings of her glowing mace. It's an impressive sight. I use the opportunity to shoot Fire Bolts into the room, burning through my mana but doing more damage than I would against the undead warriors with just my bow. Last time I fought these guys, the bows did only half damage, and did not cause bleed. Fire Bolt does more damage now, and it hits pretty frequently.

I'd use Magical Dart, too, but it still doesn't do enough damage for me to feel useful in a fight. And as great as it is that Ash seems to be able to weather the storm of these undead warriors charging at her again and again, I still want to feel like I'm contributing. I notice that the undead warriors are getting frequent hits on Ash, but her health bar reduces with incredibly slowness. She has the fewest hit points of the girls, but I think her armor must be insanely high, so she's taking less damage per hit.

She's wearing plate armor that is as black as her skin, though more reflective of light when I throw a Fire Bolt over her shoulder. It's covered in dents and dings, but it looks sturdy and powerful, and I see as the undead warrior's weapons glide off the metal plates, leaving behind scratches in the steel or whatever the armor is made of, but not doing any actual damage to Ash. We help, shooting around her, but Ash does the majority of the work in that battle.

I don't get hit at all, which I approve of; but I haven't taken a single hit since we came into the dungeon. The girls take the brunt of the attacks from our enemies. Vincent and I are ranged attackers. We're not supposed to take direct damage. It was different when it was just me, Gigi, and El. Then I'd usually have to take up melee arms because the two of them couldn't hold off the whole swarm of enemies.

But with three of them to hold off attacks, we have to be in a pretty open area for anything to get past them. Which is why my bow skill increased to 31 while we were fighting the scorpions, and why my spellcraft goes up to 28 while Ash is destroying the undead warriors. With the three warriors doing their warrior things, the ranged attackers can stay at range, and I can cast spells when they're more effective than arrows. I don't even need to do any healing. It's strange.

Vincent is the one of us with the lowest hit points, and he still has over eleven hundred. None of us are a slouch in combat. We could rotate who does the fighting in which position, but there's really no need. El is such a beast and such a tank of hit points that it doesn't make sense to move her. And Ash and Gigi are the ones with the shields, so we can't really move them. I wonder if I should get myself another shield. That's not what's strange.

What's strange is that while I feel comfortable in this position, while I fell back into the formation that we used in the tutorial so easily, I kind of miss being on my own. Not just because I didn't have to split the experience five ways, either. I know that we can take on bigger monsters more frequently and more successfully with five of us than I could alone. I know that the experience does more or less balance out over time. But still, I miss the time I spent by myself.

Which is also strange, because I feel so much more comfortable with my friends. I know that I've barely known them for two or three weeks at this point, but we've been through the literal end of the world together. We've fought side by side countless times, gained power together, seen all sorts of different things together, and shared a lot of different experiences. We've got reason to be close, and I do feel close to them. El and Gigi kind of hitting on me made me uncomfortable.

Not because I don't like them; I adore them both. And I think they're sexy. I'm attracted to them, on a physical level. But I feel like doing anything with either one of them would be bad. It would be detrimental to the group, however you slice it. Even if we ended up a throuple, that would just leave Vincent and Ash out of it. Unless we became a whole ass polycule, I couldn't imagine doing anything sexual with them. I prefer to think of them as my friends.

My girls, but in the sense of just being the girls that I'm close to, not in the sense of a relationship. I'm happy with us being a family. We're the only ones from Minneapolis, at least from that last round of tutorial. We've got a lot binding us together. I don't want to ruin it with sex. My body wants to. But my brain doesn't. And for now, at least, my brain wins. But with that struggle comes the reminder that I did just fine by myself for three days. I gained fifty four levels in those three days.

Granted, I had some help gaining a bunch of them, and I did die in between earning them. But I did well by myself. I made real progress on my own, left with my own thoughts, left to my own devices. I did well, and I don't want to discount that. Ash is finishing up with the last of the undead warriors, and I'm pulled from my reverie as we get the notification for killing them. You have defeated undead warrior x12. You gain (48, 000/5) 9, 600 experience.

"That level anyone?" Ash asks, shaking out her arms to get the blood flowing back to normal.

"Yeah," I say.

"Give me a second." I quickly put two points into strength, agility, and vigor, then three points into manipulation. Awareness is now my lowest stat, at thirty six. So even if I lost twenty points from each attribute, I'd still be above ten in everything.

"Okay," I say a moment later, once my pools are recalculated and the points are spent.

"Let me check the next door." The fourth door was locked and trapped. Heavily. There was a pressure plate in front of the door that caused spears to come stabbing down from the ceiling into and through whoever stepped on the plate. I wedged a shard of bone underneath the plate at a few points, locking it into place. It won't hold from jumping on it, but it'll let us walk over it without any real trouble.

Then there's another needle on the handle, and another one right inside the lock meant to stab whoever tries to pick the lock. I break both needles with my multitool and then set to unlock the door. This is a much more complicated lock. I briefly wonder whether this is the room to the boss or to the treasure. It would make sense either way. But if it's the boss room, I kind of want to wait and go to it last. I'd much rather get all the loot and everything b efore we fight the boss.

But I'm already working on this lock, and it's a little late to voice my objection. Besides, it doesn't sound like there's anything moving on the other side of the door, and I smell copper. While it could be blood, I'm betting on it being actual copper, as in the money. And where there is copper, there is hopefully gold, or even platinum. I trip the lock and slowly push the door open.