As Sam stated he planned to test Elara’s venom, Janik didn’t seem to react but kept the light on the bats as Sam did his thing. Since Sam had all the time in the world to aim and could reach over to them and almost poke them, there was zero chance of missing.
Stabbing the tiny wooden piece into the closest bat had it react as one would expect being poked by a wooden needle. It made a little annoyed sound, looking confused at what it was. But that wasn’t the main problem. The venom only took a few seconds to start doing its thing.
[ The target’s Vitality is too low to save against [ Venom 2 ]! ]
This was a good message to see in the corner of his eye. He had done the math earlier. With Elara’s Venom 2 ability being harder to resist, and Elara’s now higher Vitality, anything with a Vitality of 11 or less couldn’t resist it. He didn’t know if the bats had 11 exactly, 10 or even 5, but they at least didn’t have more than 11. He almost considered this Floor too easy if everything was going to be like this, but... this would be the lowest tier and probably the weakest creatures on this entire floor so... he reeled in that thought.
The bat started flailing and tried to scratch and bite the area it was poked by the toothpick, but there was no way to get that out like that. The powerful beam of light from Janik’s flashlight let them see exactly what was happening as the bat looked worse and worse by the second. It started stressing considerably, losing its grip from the ceiling and falling to the stone ground, continuing to thrash and shriek out in pain and doing its best to attack an unseen foe around it.
Its reactions triggered the other bats, having them ignore the beam of light and let go of the ceiling, starting a sailing dive towards the group. Not counting the one thrashing on the floor, there were four incoming bats.
Janik readied himself. Sam was already good to go and sent his blade swarm towards the first target. Feeling the familiar, but still somewhat unfamiliar, pull and push of the blades as they timed themselves, they all landed solidly in the first incoming bat, taking it out instantly and brutally, the blades cutting and stabbing deep into its torso and arms. It fell to the floor with a limp thud.
Sam could probably get another one before it was too late, but he wasn’t alone in the group, Dia had darted forward and once the bat was close enough to the ground, delivered a two-punch combo that took it out. Janik stood beside her and kicking off he delivered his attack at the last one, stabbing both blades into its chest at the same time, stopping it dead in its tracks.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Large Golem: 0/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 6/20 ]
[ Experience gained: +20 000. ]
[ Experience gained: +20 000. ]
[ Experience gained: +20 000. ]
He was surprised at seeing that the bats had the same XP rewards as the Golems, but since none of them had landed an attack on the group, he didn’t know how things were separated. There was a legit danger that though they were perhaps frailer, they did more damage or had something else going for them.
[ Experience gained: +20 000. ]
As he pondered the power difference, the poisoned bat finally seemed to have drawn its last breath and died as well. Giving them the XP for it as well.
“Well... This went surprisingly easy...” Janik commented in a hesitant tone.
“It is the starter dungeon of this Floor.” Sam retorted, mainly for himself, he wanted to curb his arrogance so he didn’t end up expecting everything to be this easy. “Could you see their Health?”
“I could. The bats had 70, and the Golems had 340.” Janik shared with a slight smile as he walked over to one of the golems, poking the pile of rubble with his foot.
“Why didn’t you share it right away?” Sam didn’t sound annoyed at this, more curious.
“I’ll be honest, I forgot... Seeing the golems and bats, I started focusing... haven’t fought them before so I kinda zoned out.” He sounded a bit embarrassed at this, even though Sam couldn’t see his face.
Accepting this reasoning, Sam got to digging through the bats for their cores. He didn’t have a flashlight but his phone had the LED like normal, using that he found the core of the first bat, letting him speed up the process for the next one.
Dia looked at this... process, with surprised and curious eyes, but didn’t seem to say or do much besides just taking in what he was doing.
“How do we get the cores of these fucks?” Janik asked as he tried to poke and prod the pile of rocks that used to be Golems.
“I... don’t know...” Sam commented, he hadn’t thought about it until now, working on the bats was simple enough but they are fleshy... The golems were not.
“Can we... crack them?”
“You got a sledgehammer on you?” Janik asked as he gently hit his swords together to emphasise that they were in fact, not hammers.
Sam didn’t answer right away, he didn’t even have a normal hammer. “Can we use the rocks to slam into each other?” He eventually asked to try and find a workaround.
“Nah, the guide said that you need something harder than that, or rather... if you’re strong enough that might work but...”
“We’re not strong enough.” Sam completed his sentence. It was annoying as the cores here were probably worth a bit, but if there was no proper way to get them. “When we’re done here, I say we go get a hammer from the village before we return.”
“Agreed.” Janik sounded like he was very fond of that idea. Not that Sam didn’t see that coming, Janik needed money, after all.
They continued, and the Dungeon had a very similar progression as the earlier dungeons had. The main difference was how they were clustered. Janik checked the guide material and confirmed that the Bats hit incredibly hard, but were somewhat frail, the Golems hit average for their level but were extremely sturdy. So the standard process was to take out the bats first then keep their distance from the Golems and whittle them down.
This dungeon was incredibly dangerous for a melee party. Not considering critical hits, the damage they could deal would easily stack up from the collective attacks. It was recommended to have ranged attackers and someone with either incredibly high Defence or some damage mitigation abilities. Furthering the standard holy trinity in most media and entertainment Sam used to read when young.
Using bottlenecks when needed, the Golems weren’t just slow they were dumb as well. Lacking brains was probably part of that. The bats were smarter but their lack of Defence and lower health pools meant they were easier to take out, Sam started splitting up his weapons into two groups as it was still enough to take them out. Janik got hit once by a Golem, but only 14 damage made it through, seemingly making their damage 60. Though not insane, it was still more than enough if you considered a critical hit could make it through.
Taking it slow and doing it methodical like this, got to the point where Sam almost felt he could do it alone. He wasn’t going to, after all, even if he was the main source of damage, he could only do it this calmly due to the others helping with distracting and handling the odd hit that came through.
Progressing smartly, they managed to clear the rest of the dungeon with minimal effort, they were well geared, not considering Dia who was barely geared at all, but keeping things calm meant that she didn’t need to do too much. Elara levelled up on the way, and Sam kept pumping her Vitality higher, not thinking she should be in combat more than needed so giving her Health and Venom power was the way to go.
[ Dungeon clear conditions:
Kill the Large Golem: 0/1
Optional: Kill all monsters
Monsters: 20/20 ]
In the end, they found themselves standing at the end of a tunnel with a large door in front of them.
“A door?” Sam asked. This was the first time he had seen this in a Dungeon, he expected the hallway to go straight into a room.
“Yes... it seems so.” Janik replied as surprised as Sam was. He checked the guide on his phone for a few moments. “Ah, here we go. It seems the Golem is too big to come into the hallways, so it’s suspected this was an anti-ranged measure... That makes sense, we can just stay in the hallway, attacking from afar, if it couldn’t get to us.” He sounded a bit bummed out that this was not a possibility.
“As we open this door there is a field, like the one that brings you into the dungeon, this one brings you to the boss room. It has higher Defence and, this is funny, elemental resistance.” He read what he saw in the app out loud with a slight smile. “Well... I suppose there’s no turning back once we go in here.”
Sam mentally wondered if the emergency dungeon exit worked, and as he thought that the prompt popped up, asking if he wanted to emergency leave. Denying that window had it closed but it explained what he needed to know.
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“Well, Elemental resistance doesn’t do shit against us, and higher Defence is... annoying, sure, but is it still slow?”
“Yyyyy... Yes-” Janik started replying before he had confirmed it properly. “But it also throws rocks around the room, suppose that’s mainly a problem for mages but as long as we’re careful, I think we should be good?” He sounded both certain about this but also very questioning of his own words.
“Well, we came this far, we can always emergency leave if we need to.” Sam commented as he went for the door. He didn’t wait to open it, after all, it was just the door to the transport field. Dia followed very closely to him as she tended to do.
Janik nodded and shrugged as he pocketed his phone, walking towards the door as well.
Opening the door showed a dead end, but with a shimmering field in front of it, as expected. And stepping closer had the familiar popup about the transport show, agreeing to it enveloped them in the familiar white light.
As soon as they could properly see, but before the white light properly faded, Sam used it to see what was going on in the dark room. It was large, easily the size of an entire football field, and would easily take about a minute to walk from one side to the other. The place was also littered with rocks, all from small enough that even Sam could casually move them, to man-sized boulders. One pile of rocks, looking eerily similar to the golems could barely be seen in the distance before the transport light faded.
Janiik was quick on getting his strong flashlight on the assumed target, it was much harder to see in here due to the distance, but luckily for the group, Janik was prepared. Grabbing his flashlight and seemingly twisting it, refocused the wide-angle light into a much tighter and focused spot. Normally that would have been a bad thing when in hallways or fighting something closeish, but at this distance it allowed them to barely make out the hulking moving pile of rocks as it got up from what looked like a long rest.
The room echoed with the sounds of rock against rock as it got up to face them, at least it looked like it was facing them, a mix of poor light, distance and lacking features on the Golem itself made it surprisingly hard to discern.
All of them started moving closer, and though Sam’s range had increased it was still a problem doing anything at this distance, but not knowing what to expect they proceeded carefully. Janik did his best to keep the beam of light on their target, though this made walking on the rocky ground harder than it should have been, it was the more important thing to focus on at the moment.
Getting a bit closer, the Golem bent down before making a throwing motion, there wasn’t enough light to properly see exactly where it threw whatever it picked up, but it was most likely one of them.
“Spread out!” Janik ordered as he changed his movement to get some distance sideways.
Sam did the same, he intended to grab Dia on the way in case she hadn’t learned the words yet, but she was already moving. She could probably see and hear much better than Janik and Sam put together, so if Sam knew, she probably did as well.
It didn’t take many seconds before the deafening sounds of a boulder crashing and cracking against the floor sent rocks flying around. Several smaller ones made their way across both Sam and Dia, not enough to cause any damage but still put the impact in perspective.
Taking advantage of the time the Golem needed to prepare for another throw, the group darted forward, doing their best to avoid the rocks. Janik had to use his light to flash down on the floor, seeing where he was running. Though this made it exponentially harder for Dia and Sam, or rather, for Sam, using his Psyhands to feel the ground in front of him compensated for some of this. Amazingly enough, none of them ended up tripping, although there were several close calls.
Having to dodge a few more times as the Golem kept throwing rocks at them, it was clear this was mainly an issue if you didn’t have any source of light or had to stand still for whatever reason, perhaps chanting or longer-timed attacks would make this an issue. None of them had the range to exploit this anyway, so the only thing this affected was their approach.
Finally getting in range, everything changed. Sam pulled out his weapons which were sheathed across his body, Janik went further to the side and started throwing rocks at the Golem, Dia did the same as she saw what he was doing, both seeming to ignore damaging it in favour of drawing its attention. Sam made sure his Clustered attack was active before sending in the first wave of attacks.
The first volley did acceptably, the hard, dense stone making up its body made it incredibly problematic to power through, causing several blades to effectively miss as they glanced off its body. Among the missing weapons were the Bleeding Edge, the Vampiric dagger and the short sword. The Moonblade and several daggers landed true, one of the cheap daggers even critting. He didn’t take the time to calculate the damage but it should be somewhat decent even considering the Defence rating it had.
Suddenly, the Golem looked to crouch slightly, this placed both of its hands on the floor covered in stones, before it spun around quickly, with its legs standing still it looked like it had no spine, or that it was set on a swivel. This attack sent a shower of rocks spraying in any and every direction, showering them all in a shotgun of projectiles.
[ Armour, Defence 60 has negated the damage. ]
Sam felt relieved, this spray didn’t do enough damage to even hurt him, but he saw something else in the corner of his eye that changed his expression.
[Dia HP: 160 / 190 ████████░░ ]
He cursed himself, having only given her a Defence 10 set of armour, it wasn’t enough to take her down or critically hit her but it was dramatic enough.
“Janik, protect Dia from the next of those!” Sam commanded he wasn’t the leader but Janik didn’t have the same insight into her stats as Sam did, so all he could do was give out a command and hope for the best. He also knew that if his own armour could take the spray without damage, Janik’s was a little better and should make it even easier.
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
The following swam of attacks, Sam took advantage of the moment the Golem used to regain its balance to aim and strike. He was glad to see that he landed four critical hits, of those were the Moonblade, the Shadow Fang, the Short sword and one of the daggers. The damage delivered this time was considerable. The Golem started cracking opening up chasms in its body, it was looking incredibly rough.
Pointing its fist towards Sam, seemingly having recognized who was the threat in the group, Sam expected it to throw or launch something, but instead, its fist exploded, sending a concentrated cone of sharp stones towards him. Dodging to the side, aiming to jump behind a nearby boulder failed spectacularly as it seemed to only make him a longer target.
[ Armour, Defence 40 has lowered the damage. Critical hit. ]
[ HP: 85 / 165 █████░░░░░ ]
This critical hit chunked out about half his health, Sam felt panic rise in the back of his mind, but his logic barely managed to keep it in check. Getting back to his feet he prepared for another of those, he was now near one of the boulders so if he got another of those attacks he could dodge behind it properly, and even though that critical hit did a total of 120 damage, this meant that short of a critical hit it would ‘only’ do 80, not good but more acceptable.
Janik shouted to get its attention, but it didn’t seem to work, the Golem walked towards the only one who had damaged it, Sam felt fear more than he did two seconds ago and decided to make another boulder a bit further away.
[ Telekinetic boost active. Time remaining: 29 / 29 seconds ]
Using the extra strength in his Psyhands, Sam placed large rocks under the Golem’s feet as it walked forward, having to drop all of his weapons in a rough pile for that to work he hoped this would affect the danger. Using three seconds of his available time he got a bunch of rocks placed in the path of the Boss’ steps, Sam smiled as it stepped on them.
However, his smile didn’t last as the weight of the Golem simply crushed the rocks, creating nothing but a stable platform of pebbles under its massive foot. Sam deactivated the Boost and picked up his blades for an attack, but not before the Golem aimed its other fist against Sam.
Janik had stepped in and delivered a two-sword attack at its legs, both of his blades landed properly, and though they somehow managed to dig deep into its stone body, it wasn’t enough. As the Golem’s fist started cracking towards Sam, he dove behind a boulder, hearing the crackling explosion sent forward. He was lucky to take no damage but the boulder he was hiding behind was crumbling as a result, another one of those would just break through.
Popping his head up to check on what was going on, Sam saw that rocks from the area around the Golem were collecting in the area where its fists were located, congealing into a new fist. Not having noticed this before, the first fist had repaired itself and was now lifted towards Sam. He looked around for the next intact boulder, large enough to protect him.
As he started moving for the next cover he heard Dia’s voice shout with panicked power.
[ Dia used Spin Kick. ]