Author’s Note: One chapter today, but it's quite long. I had different ideas on how to do this, so it took me longer than expected, but I finally finished. Also, i am doing small poll regarding how should I proceed next.Regarding the poll, if I write normally, there will be 1-3 chapters a day, at some point later on I will come back to the previous chapters to redact them. If I do it now, since I don't have PR, it may take some time, and I will probably post 1 chapter a day until mistakes and grammar will be corrected. So if you are interested, decide, time poll ends is 2 days. Point out any mistakes, answer the poll, and enjoy!
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Rob's POV:
We were standing side by side, with barely any place to move between us, waiting for the first kobolds to reach us. Though there were a lot of them, we would be facing one each at a time. Yet the pressure remained. I looked one last time at giant and dwarf nearby, and the battle began. First to act was Brom, as he swung his axe overhead, bisecting enemy, before he could do anything. Having long range must have been nice.
I had no time to watch on, one of the kobolds charged at me, so I had to focus my attention. A strange calmness enveloped me, as I saw him thrust his spear at me. I leaned to the side, barely avoiding the blow, and caught the handle with one hand, before surprised creature could pull it back. Tugging at it, I simultaneously struck out with my stiff hand.
It easily went into kobolds head and exited on the other side. At the same time, I felt something akin to a flash of light in my head. A scene of goblins head smashed with a rock. A bandits head splattered with a stick. But as fast as they came, they were gone. However they distracted me, and I didn’t notice another kobold, with sword raised, closing in on me. Closing my eyes I raised hands in defence, expecting pain to come.
A deep, metallic thud resounded, and kobold dropped its weapon, its arms shaking and eyes filled with fear. I didn’t think about it twice, swiping my claws at its face, while I had a chance. When next opponent jumped over the body of my last, I decided to directly block his blade with my hands, to ascertain something. Again, the only thing I felt was slight touch, while creature’s weapon rebounded on contact with my scaled hands. It caused kobold to lose its balance, allowing me to finish it quickly.
From that moment, the battle proceeded smoothly. Prowess of my companions, combined with my unbreakable defense, sowed doubt in their hearts. More and more started to run away, finally leaving us alone, in the room filed with corpses. After counting them, we killed 26 of them. I myself did 7, Brom 11 and Romulus 8. And we weren’t even tired. Well, at least I wasn’t. Romulus was panting hard, and Brom teased him for that.
“Do you need to rest old man? You know, this is just the beginning.”
“Who…Huf, huf…needs to…huf…rest? I am…huf…ready for…a hundred more…”
“Hahaha! Of course you are! After all, this was just the easiest part, later on we will fend off more dangerous stuff, while RUNNING!”
Brom was laughing even harder now. I saw him in new light. He may have seemed friendly, but he was a sadist. Dwarf just grunted, leaning on his axe, trying to catch his breath. After his laughing fit stopped, the giant turned to me, looking at me thoughtfully. I straightened my back under his appraising look. Finally he decided to speak what was on his mind.
“Your scales are definitely useful Drake. I wonder if you could withstand blow from me?”
Drake? Did he just give me a name? Wait, more importantly is he going to hit me?!
“Eee, please don’t joke like that Brom, Kobold weapons were rusted and they didn’t possess much strength, while you…”
“Ok, ok, don’t worry, I won’t do it. However I was serious about your toughness. Kobolds aren’t really that weak, they are classified as D rank monsters, its just that we are way stronger.”
I felt a bit uncomfortable under his gaze and fidgeted. He noticed my reaction, and turned his head away while changing the topic.
“As per rules in these cases, each one of us gets his own share. So better get to it, Life Force will disperse soon.”
Life Force? Another flash of memory. An old man, telling me something very important. Again, as soon as memory appeared, it was gone before I could grasp its meaning. Frustrated, I shook my head to clear my thought. Brom and Romulus were going from corpse to corpse, extending their hands for a moment, over each one they passed. I didn’t understand the meaning of their actions, and Brom saw me standing in place with question plastered on my face. He stopped what he was doing and went over to explain.
“You can absorb Life Force of monsters into you, Drake, to make yourself stronger. It lingers above dead bodies for some time. You need to feel it, it’s quite easy to discern, and then focus on it entering your body. You can imagine grasping at it, when you see it, and it should enter through your hand.”
Then he waited for me to try. I did as they were doing, extending my hand over one of my victims and focusing my attention the body and the air above it. There was a strange feeling to it, almost like I had hand in warm current. I imagined grasping this warm breeze, and felt something enter my body. I nodded with happiness to Brom, who smiled and went to finish his process.
After absorbing everything we could, we proceeded with our journey. The path we travelled was a series of narrow corridors, like the one in which we made stand against kobolds, and abandoned guard posts. When we passed fourth guard post unhindered, Romulus stopped us, saying that we were about to enter central complex, The Crossroad.
Giant and dwarf started strategizing in hushed voices, while I listened. The path before us, was going to be a big, long cave, spanning for a couple of kilometers. A full kilometer ahead, the cave split, one way going down towards the mining shaft, another to Rasgar Hold. We decided, that we would slowly proceed from one hiding spot to another, fighting only if necessary. At any sign of danger we couldn’t handle, and unless we weren’t cut off, we would retreat back to the surface to wait for a day.
Stealth and silence were priority, so I was wondering how Brom was going to manage either of these with his stature. We left guard post, and entered very large cave, with big columns holding the ceiling. They had span of 20 feet each, so there wasn’t any problem with hiding our group behind one of them.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The real issue lied everywhere around us. On the columns there were crystal torches, illuminating a huge obstacle to our plan. Spider webs. Strewn all around, they covered most of the view before us. Tunnels, spanning 6 feet, could be seen here and there, clearly meant as entry points for the current hosts of this place. If not for the need for silence, I would have cursed loudly. How exactly were we supposed to be stealthy, when we had to hack our way through these webs?!
Without moving back, Brom and Romulus revised our plan. We would destroy some net in our proximity, and wait for a reaction. If nothing happened, we would slowly proceed, following one of the tunnels on the ground.
Of course nothing happened. The whole web vibrated after being struck, but after settling down, there was no more movement from it. With bated breath, we went into the nearest tunnel, hoping for the best. I pitied Brom a little, who with his height had to hunch so much, he almost crawled on his hands.
We were surrounded by white stickiness. From all sides, except the floor. Barely seeing around us, we were slowly going forward, looking around for any kind of movement. Everything was deathly still. It gave me eerie feeling. As if we were walking into a trap.
We could barely see the starting point, when we encountered some kind of a room. It was shaped like a cocoon, with pillar on the left side, and 3 tunnels to choose from in front of us. Each curved at some point ahead, so we couldn’t see where each of them led ultimately. Rom simply went into the middle one, so we followed, with Brom in the middle and me last.
Indefinite amount of time passed, and I was already growing tired of the same surroundings, when we encountered dead end. Rom was mad, and he slashed across the wall of white in front of his, before we could stop him. The axe cut, revealing large cocoon shaped chamber, similar to the one we left, except this one was filled with eggs and had one tunnel on the other side.
Oh. And the other thing. When the web was struck this time, it didn’t stop vibrating. And everything around us started moving. Apparently we were surrounded on all sides, by an unknown number of creepy crawlies. I was wandering how could they move outside of the tunnels we went through, when I noticed smoke rising from a spot on the ceiling. The web quickly dissolved, letting in a 2 feet tall, black hairy spider.
Except the substance that dissolved the web, these ones weren’t really dangerous. There were a lot of them, but they were easily squashed with one strike. Brom could stand tall in this room, so he had it easy, strapping his axe to the back and flattening spiderlings with his bare fists. As we destroyed the swarming little ones, the big ones made their appearance. There was a loud screech from the way we came, and a 5.5 feet tall monstrosities arrived one after another. And more screeches resounded around us. Judging by the loudness, there must have been at least 50 of these things, and they could come two sides.
“Run!”
Rom shouted, and after slicing through another spiderling dashed to the opposite side, then where we came from. I followed closely behind, leaving giant a little behind us, but he quickly caught up. We couldn’t outrun the spiders, so we had to fight on the run. Wasn’t worried for myself, the spider’s acid didn’t do anything to me, but other two had patches clothes burnt and had to be vigilant against both small and big spiders.
We were stopped a couple of times, when one of the bigger versions came from around the corner. In such cases I went forward to help Rom clear the hindrance as quickly as possible, while giant behind us had to fend for himself. I had small hope in my heart that we could make it, when we reached another chamber. However this time, there was no way out. No tunnel following, nothing. Brom guarded the entrance, allowing us to try to find way out, but there was none.
Suddenly, the web beside me ripped open, and a spider leg, as tall as me, struck me. Unprepared, I received blow to my shoulder. The leg penetrated defense of my scales, leaving small wound. It didn’t matter how small the wound was, I was hurt, and I lost it. Until then I was sure I would survive somehow anyway, because nothing could breach my scales. However I received the wound, and something took over my reason.
Romulus’s POV:
Blasted kobolds, blasted spiders, and fucking GIANT! What madness overtook me to accept his request?! Now I will die here, eaten by those disgusting crawlers! The dragon-spawn we took with us, can’t he do something about this situation?! He should know some magic, at least, right?!
I chopped and chopped at the web, but all that came in view was more, bloody web. No way out, this was dead end. I turned back, to see how others were doing. At this moment, Drake, or whatever his name is, was struck to the shoulder and fell down with shocked face. Moment later he opened his mouth but instead of words, there came a deafening roar. Was that guy crazy?! Did he want to bury us alive? After roar ended, I barely had any time to fall down to avoid a stream of fire that followed. I had blank mind. Smelling webs and bodies, I could only pray that Brom managed to notice what was going on and avoid disaster.
I don’t know exactly how long it lasted, I almost suffocated from heat and smoke. When everything grew quiet, I opened my eyes, only to see clear passage with charred columns, and no spiders around. The fire burned webs in the radius of 300 feet, and I could clearly see the surviving spiders run back to safety.
The giant saw the fire before it reached him, so he had only slightly burned back. The dragon boy lied unconscious where he stood before, seemingly not breathing.
I looked around and recognized the place we were in. Just ahead of us lied narrower passages, leading to Rasgar Hold. Only small distance and we were home. We survived this shit! We WERE ALIVE! I started to laugh, and couldn't stop myself for some time. I had to buy beer for this dracodwarf whatever-his-name-is, if not for him and some god damn luck, we would end up a spiders meal.