The furnace salamanders were waddling out of the lava but their speed took a severe hit as they finally clawed their way up the rocky edge. From there their round forms didn’t allow them to make fast enough progress so the team managed to put enough distance between themselves as to disengage before either side managed to get a blow off. The mages simply took a moment to raise an earth wall before they also retreated quickly.
“What rotten luck. Not only do we get an environmental floor but we have to deal with furnace salamanders.” One of the rangers said while everyone else was catching their breath following the impromptu sprint.
“Are we… going to be leaving… that pack for last?” Ajax asked while heaving. “There were… two level sixty-five bosses there.”
Having seen the two arches that were on opposite sides of the small pond Ajax determined that both of the bosses and their small pack had mixed together in the lava pond and were now acting as one big group.
“I say we don’t fight them at all.” the healer spat out as he lay on his hands and knees heaving in air. “Let them come out of the dungeon after us and get blasted.”
“No, we’ll kill them.” Trevor countered with a tone that said he had made up his mind.
“Trevor are you crazy?” the scout that had been closest to them asked. “How do you plan for us to take on that many of them?”
Ajax had to admit that it was a question he himself had. The age old question in this world was what came first, the dungeons or life? Did life evolve first and then the dungeon copied it to create the denizens of each floor or were the dungeons first and they spat out the first forms of life. It was a question that humanoids had no answer to and one that Ajax wondered if the dragons knew. Regardless this meant that they knew the exact characteristics of the furnace salamanders.
Knowing the specifics of a beast and killing it however were two very different things. Furnace salamanders are large horse sized lizards that resemble a mix between the komodo dragon with the head of a king cobra. They are highly, with an extremely scaly and durable skin that is also highly resistant to most elements but in particular heat. Besides their extreme durability the lizards are usually also quick on their feet easily being able to dash around.
Their name however came from their unique characteristic of swallowing magma. Not only were furnace lizards highly resistant to heat on the outside but they were also resistant to it on the inside. For their extreme defense and speed the lizards had sacrificed all direct forms of offense. The only offense they had was the lava they swallowed, with their elastic insides that allowed them to puff out like a blowfish to store lava they could later spit out. They are usually herbivores with little territorial behavior but that was changed by the dungeon.
The question of how they could take on a dozen furnace salamanders was a great one. Their defense meant it would take a lot of effort to bring one down. Not only that but after they had emptied their load they would regain their usual speed and make a quick dash back into the pond to reload.
“We’ll clear the rest of the floor first.” Trevor said. “After that we’ll use the obelisk to get them to leave their pond, that way they’ll only have one load each.”
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Everyone gave a sigh of relief once they heard Trevors plan. Attacking into the salamanders at their pond would mean they would take at least three or four fatalities but drawing them out using the obelisk was a good plan. It would take a lot of preparation as they didn;t want anything else to join the salamanders in their final battle.
With the new plan established the team spent most of the afternoon making for the highest point they could see to get a better layout of the floor. They then spent the rest of their time setting up the camp there in such a way that a nocturnal attack would pose little threat to them.
Their planning paid off in spades as despite their defenses they were once again visited by golems during the night. The defenses and strict watch they kept meant that everyone was woken up in a timely manner and the golems were dispatched without anyone taking and significant damage.
The next six days the team spent meticulously clearing out the rest of the floor. Now that they knew what to expect it wasn’t all that difficult as the worms, golems and scorpions were easy for them to handle and everyone was too on edge after the nocturnal attacks and the salamander ambush to be careless.
Besides finding a group of three golems whose bodies they could take back outside the dungeon and a few patches of moss, the whole delve wasn’t all that remarkable. The big surprise for them however came on day five when they happened upon another, smaller group of furnace salamanders. The big difference however was that this time the reptiles weren’t near a magma pond.
“Now this is much, how do you like that you useless fucking reptile?!” one of the team's heavy knights yelled as he grappled with the salamander.
Without any magma all the salamanders had was speed which meant that once they came in contact with a physical fighter that focused on strength they could actually pin them down without any fear as they had nothing to threaten them with.
The team knew better than to just kill them off quickly and instead used the weak pack as a test for their final battle. While everyone had read about the furnace salamanders not all of them had encountered one before so they launched their attacks to see how much damage they could do to their tanky scales.
It came as almost no surprise to himself but Ajax quickly found out that his void attacks were the best choice against the salamanders. More surprising however was the fact that his void element became almost entirely useless if the attack hit the salamanders anywhere except their skull. This made his void an all or nothing blow where a headshot would mean an instant kill and anything else was a waste of mana. This was all well and good until you remembered that their head is also the source of their lava jet.
“What are you doing now?” the warrior holding on to one of the lizards asked Ajax as he approached slowly.
“I want to see if this is effective against them.” Ajax said as he carefully sliced into the scorpion poison sack and allowed it to drip onto the back of the lizard's scales.
“Hey, be careful with that thing!” The warrior was quick to withdraw his legs and tighten his grip as the salamander started to struggle harder, throwing a little of the acidic poison around.
The scorpion venom took all of five seconds to get soaked up into the elastic scaly skin of the salamander. A quick normal strike with his hammer afterwards let Ajax find out that the scorpion poison was the natural counter to the salamander's tough skin as the soaked patch cracked and peeled off the struggling reptile.
“New standing order, any scorpions that we find are to be carefully killed and the poison sac collected.” Trevor was quick to act once he saw the results of Ajax’s experiment.
Ajax and two of the rangers had also taken the time to skin all five of the salamanders after they killed them, they would use any of the non damaged skin to layer over the shields they brought that way they would have a defense against the opening volley later.
By the end of the sixth day the team had cleaned out the floor and was setting camp around the obelisk. The location of the obelisk was on a rather large open plane and the entire team was thankful it hadn’t been a mile to the left as that would have placed it at the bottom of a depression. Everyone was taking a good rest tonight as tomorrow would be a hard fight.
Everyone already knew their part of the plan, the only exceptions were the bonds. They were all told to stay back and out of range. Despite their lack of offensive tools the sheer level difference meant that their physical attacks would be enough to injure the bonds, not to mention the lava they could spit out. The only exception was the eagle as it had been given leave to fly high above and keep and eye over the battle, its main objective was to ensure that if they missed any creature they would be given a heads up before it arrived.