Chương 63: Chapter 64: Finishing the dungeon

It's the treasure room. We haven't really earned it yet in my opinion, but this is where all the loot is. There are piles and piles of coins stacked up in a chest that is overflowing just enough to be impractical to want to just take the whole chest. There must be hundreds of coins in there. I don't get credit for opening the chest, because it's already open, but my pick lock skill does go up to 15 from the door.

"Okay," Ash says, looking at the pile.

"I think the only way to do this is to loot the entire thing, then divvy it up from there. I have five platinum, thirty gold, and a hundred silver on me currently." I'm not sure why that matters, but I remember the numbers. Ash then goes to the treasure chest and dumps the entire contents of it into her bag. Then she closes her eyes for a few seconds, nods, and starts pulling out stacks of coins from her back.

"That's two platinum, ninety gold, sixty six silver, and two hundred and twelve copper a piece. So I have seven platinum, a hundred and twenty gold, one sixty-six silver, and two twelve copper when all is said and done. Right?" I do the math.

"Sounds right to me," I say. She hands me my share. I don't really care. If she kept some extra for herself, I wouldn't begrudge her. I don't care about money, except when it can buy me something that I can't find for myself. I don't need to pay for food or for shelter, only for luxuries. It's nice to have a heavy coin purse, so to speak, but it doesn't really matter all that much.

If there was something that one of them wanted, and I had the money and they didn't, or they just needed a little bit extra, I'd give it to them in a heartbeat. And I wouldn't care when or even if they paid me back. We're a group, a team. Daresay a pack. As far as I'm concerned, our money is communal. Which is not to say that I'm entitled to their money. More that they're entitled to mine, I guess? Plus we have that communal fund that Gigi used to be keeping. Don't forget about that, however much that might be.

Hopefully, she's still keeping track of it, and will pull it out when we need party funds for something. If we ever do. The coins are not the only treasure in the room. There's also a bunch of jewelry. Rings abound. And from the look of them, they're all magical. El chooses first, and takes a ruby ring that seems like it has a fire burning inside the ruby. I then take an emerald ring that identifies itself as a ring of the forest. Ring of the forest. Rare. +4 Awareness. You can only wear one ring per hand.

That is definitely worth having. I like things that increase my stats without me having to spend points on them. That puts my awareness at forty. That'll be good for Mab's Rage, whenever I decide to use it. The fifth door isn't locked or trapped. We open it cautiously. It leads into a large room with only two noticeable features. One of them is a staircase leading downward. The other looks like a wingless dragon. Stone Drake. Legendary elite dragonoid, level 27. HP 27, 000/27, 000. Dungeon boss.

Or at least floor boss, if the stairs behind it mean anything. El is about to charge ahead and start fighting the thing, but I hold her back.

"Let's try something first," I say. And I stand outside the doorway and use Sniper Shot. It apparently wasn't paying attention, because I get the sneak attack bonus, doing 1855 damage to it. That with bleed is worth ten percent of its health. I then shoot it with Rapid Shot for 1457. Then I wait. As I thought, the drake is too big to fit through the doorway.

It moves to the edge and tries to snap at me, but its shoulders won't fit through the door, so as long as I'm about seven feet back from the door, its long neck and head can't reach me. But the others can chop at it as it sticks its head out and tries to bite me. It quickly thinks better of that and pulls back into the room. I see it inhale, and I jump out of the way, diving to the side as it blasts fire out into the room with us. It's hot, and my Shell still takes 140 damage, but it's nowhere near devastating.

And I know that it takes several minutes for the breath weapon to recharge. So I stand back up and fire another Rapid Shot at it. The others get the idea, and we're soon slaughtering the drake with the architecture of the dungeon. It can't get out to attack us, and it doesn't have enough ranged attacks to keep up with our assault. So much like with the lava lords, it has no choice but to stand there and let us kill it.

It does breathe fire one more time before we do kill it, and this time it hits me more full on, doing 363 damage to me, but I don't start to burn or anything like that. I think that's because of Shell, which is still over a thousand points strong. You have defeated stone drake. You gain (27, 000/5) 5400 experience. I get another level of animal harvesting as I peel scales from the drake, hoping they will qualify for my quest. Even if they don't, they'll probably be useful for crafting.

The scales were hard, and a good number of arrows were destroyed trying to kill this thing. But I'm not sure they're dragon scales. I'll have to check with the hunter guild. And the next thing you know, we're descending the stairs, going deeper into the dungeon. The second floor of the dungeon is much more labyrinthine. By which I mean there is one long hallway that we walk down, with no side passages, no doors, and breaks.

But there are sharp turns that make me feel like we're looping back on the path we started with, slowly moving towards the center as we loop back and forth. I lay my hand against the wall as we walk, just in case there are side passages that we just can't see due to forced perspective or illusion or something, but the wall is solid. There's nowhere else to go but forward, even though it keeps looping back around itself. Soon, we're spilled out of the tunnel like passage and into a large area.

We are literally spilled out, as the floor suddenly dips down into a wide open space. It looks like we'll have to work together to climb back out. But that's just one problem. The other problem is that the area we are spilled out into is wide, open, and completely without places to hide. And there, in that area, is a minotaur. Minotaur. Legendary Elite monster, level 35. HP: 35, 000/35, 000. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. That's bad.

What's worse is what I see behind him. I won't say over his shoulder, because his shoulder is about seven feet in the air. But behind him, maybe through his legs, I see something that worries me. Minotaur generator. Legendary rare elite generator, level 40. HP 200, 000/200, 000. So not only is there a boss, but we have a time limit. If we don't kill him in time, he'll be replaced by another boss. We're just lucky there aren't already two of them.

As if we triggered their appearance, a second minotaur steps out of the generator. And I decide that maybe I should shut up about being grateful that things aren't worse already.

"Vincent, destroy the generator. El and Caleb on one minotaur, Gigi and I on the other." Ash spits out orders so clearly and directly that it's easiest just to follow what she says, drawing my blade and stepping up to fight the nearest minotaur alongside El. I do cast Mab's Rage this time. I know that it will only hit three creatures, potentially four if one more comes out of the generator, but I think this is still the time to use it.

And forty points a second is going to add up nicely over the next minute and a half. I use Bleeding Strike on the minotaur, cutting across its thigh for 292 damage as I move to flank the creature with El. She bears her two axes, each one of them big enough to be wielded with both hands, and swings them at the minotaur, her first axe knocking the bull headed creature's own axe out of the way, the second one sinking into his side. The minotaur is fast, but we outnumber it.

I'm hitting for 450 damage now that we're flanking, and the minotaur is still focusing most of his attention on El. Probably because she is doing more damage than I am, even with the flanking bonus. She goes into this sort of frenzy, swinging her axes again and again, hitting him more often but less cleanly. The axe wounds are hard to keep up with, even the ugly ones, and the minotaur has to spend most of its time dealing with her attacks or else it will get something chopped off.

All I'm doing, comparatively, is pissing it off. Which is not to say that it ignores me. I get caught with a back swipe of its axe, which deals 55 damage to me. Seems like he's hitting me half as often as I'm hitting him, and is hitting El blow for blow that she has with him. He's fast enough that one on one I'm not sure even I would be faster than he is, and he hits like a sledge hammer every time he impacts. But if he's a sledge hammer, El is a truck.

I can hear bones cracking when she hits him with her axe, and I can see the deep gouges even her glancing blows do. I take another 165 damage from the minotaur in about the time it takes us to bring his health bar down to half. Thankfully, a minute and a half passes without a third minotaur coming out of the generator. If they were spawning that fast, I'm not sure we could have killed them. We just aren't doing damage fast enough.

We've dealt maybe twenty thousand damage to him in the last minute and a half, but he still has twelve thousand to play with even without Mab's Rage tearing him apart. If the five of us concentrated on a single minotaur to the exclusion of all else, we might – might – be able to deal the thirty five thousand damage needed to kill it in a minute. But we'd be attacking all out, forgoing any attempt at defense. And even then, it would be close. No, we need more time to be able to catch up. And we have two minutes.

That's good. We even have three. But we don't have four. At the end of the third minute, just when El and I have gotten our minotaur down to about 5, 000 hit points, another one comes out of the portal.

"You got this?" El asks me. Then she nods.

"You got this." And then she's charging at the third minotaur, like she's going to take it out by herself. I need to finish my minotaur so I can help her. But now he's facing me directly. And I was right; he's faster than I am. I hit him twice, but he hits me three times. And he's not flanked anymore, so 225 is about as much damage as I can do to him each time we cross blades. So I do 450 to him in the time it takes him to do 165 to me.

I do manage to kill him, but he gets through my Shell and deals 48 damage to my fleshy bits before I do. I recast Shell and move to help the others. In the time it took me to finish off my minotaur, Gigi and Ash finished theirs, and the three girls are now surrounding the third minotaur, steadily drawing his health downward. I look at the generator. Looks like Vincent has 'only' managed to do about thirty thousand damage to it in the time we've been fighting. I move to join him.

We're not going to have the generator completely destroyed in time. It's going to spit out another minotaur, and I don't think the girls are going to be done with the one they're working on in time. I leave Vincent to keep attacking the generator, and I take a moment to prepare myself for a fresh and ready minotaur to come out and start attacking. I know I won't have to hold up against it for very long, but I also know that I probably can't take it in a one on one fight.

When it comes out, I slash it with Bleeding Strike to get its attention on me, and then I go on the defensive. I duck and I weave, dodging the shining axe blade sometimes by only a few inches. I focus exclusively on dodging, determined to hit him only when he leaves himself wide open for an attack. I manage to slash at his ribs after he over extends himself on one attack, then slash at his thigh when he lunges too far forward on another.

But the third time I go after an obvious opening, it turns out to be a trap, a feint. He looks like he steps too far and is off balance. I lunge forward to stab him, but he whirls on his hoof and slams the axe into my stomach, lifting me off the ground with the force of the impact. The one attack does 455 damage to my Shell, dropping the new shell almost down to 1000 hit points. I'm not going to have time to cast Shell again without yet another minotaur spawning.

I have to kill this one, or at least keep fighting it until the girls can take over. Then I can help Vincent again. Luckily, it's not long before the girls come and take over. Almost immediately, the minotaur starts ignoring me for these larger and more dangerous targets. They must do significantly more damage than I do. Sure enough, his health bar begins to decrease as fast as the other one, and I turn to flank the generator so that I can get more damage that way.

The generator is down to half hit points, and I know that at least one more minotaur is going to get out of the generator before we destroy it. I don't know if it's a better strategy for one of the girls to come help destroy the generator or to keep them all on the minotaur, to keep killing them as the generator spits them out. We'd have to face fewer of them, but we might get overwhelmed by numbers if they aren't killing them as fast as they get generated.

I let out a sigh of relief when El's axe slams into the generator. That means that they killed this minotaur in time to be able to take the next one that comes out, and Vincent and I can just keep chipping away at its health while the girls take out the minotaurs that come out. I have to say, I'm surprised no one got gored. It was a close call for El, but she actually caught the horns in her hands and stopped the charge of the minotaur.

I could see her muscles bulging under her armor while she did it, and I was amazed at the feat of strength that it took to arrest the movement. I think her strength has to be close to my agility at this point. And I know her vigor is higher than mine. She's got pretty great stats herself. But then, that makes sense. She's six levels higher than me; that means she's got at least fifty more stat points than she did at my level. I wonder if she has more than me overall. I don't think she does.

But she has a lot of them, and she apparently put most of them into either strength or vitality. That's the only way to explain how she has so many hit points and is so goddamned strong. It's exhausting and time consuming, but we do eventually defeat the generator, and the minotaurs that came out of it. You have defeated minotaur x7, minotaur generator. You gain (445, 000/5) 89, 000 experience. That's enough for everyone to level, at least once. I level twice, giving me eighteen points to distribute.

I put four in strength, four in agility, and four in vigor. The other six points I put into presence. Right now I need mana more than I need more stamina. This puts my hit points at 1820, my MP at 1288, and my stamina at 1344. It also puts me just two levels away from that added talent. And it completes the dungeon quest. I harvest the horns from the minotaurs, we take their axes, and there's a small chest that is unlocked and has five of the same item in it. Horn necklace of Might. +5 strength.

A good reward for a dungeon, even a relatively short one.