Chapter 28 – Rushing Forward

The next morning a bruised and battered squad commenced to delve the dungeon. Last night their injuries were found not to be bad enough to warrant medical attention. Now they were once again at the entrance of the third floor.

“Okay everyone,” Jasper said, “today we’ll rush through this floor, all the way to the entrance of the fourth floor. We'll use an arrow formation all the way from here to the exit. When we reach the exit we will recover at the entrance cave of the fourth floor. Leophon, as the strongest of us you will be on point. Don't bother killing every ant, just brush them aside. We don't want to be caught in a quagmire. Just continue all and remember never stop.

As soon as everyone was in formation, the squad rushed forward. Just like every other time there was no ant in sight. Normally it took at least ten to fifteen minutes before the first ant would show up. Today though, they were unlucky.

The first ant was seen after only three minutes. It was a normal scout, but after only two more minutes (so five minutes in total) a squad ants, including one of the spitter ants. Normally they would engage these ants, but following their plan, this time they rushed past them. The downside of this was that an alarm was raised. Within moments more and more Ants surfaced.

Soon they were held up by the sheer numbers of ants.

“Keep pushing!” Jasper said. But they were unable to push through.

When it proved that they couldn't keep pushing forward, it was time for the mages to do their thing. Lately their spells had taken advanced a lot in strength. The new start points made sure that the spells were getting bigger and bigger.

An ice- and a fire bolt shot right past Leophon. The bolts crashed into some ants in the third or fourth row. The two bolts exploded right at the same time. This made for a big ass explosion. When the bright light from the explosion retreated, two big circles where all cleared of ants. Immediately the squad rushed forward, taking advantage to get their momentum back. Soon they were through the encirclement.

Even after breaking through the ants, they had to fight several more groups of ants. Luckily not in such humongous numbers, but still at least a dozen at a time.

When they finally arrived at the entrance of the fourth floor, they were all relieved. Most of them just dropped to the floor with exhaustion.

“What the hell was that? We’ve never fought so many ants at the same time. Where did they all come from?”

“I don’t know, but it’s just our luck. The one time we don’t want to fight them because we want to explore the fourth floor, then there are enough of them to give us lots of experience.”

“Well, better luck next time. Today we’re going to explore the fourth floor, and that’s that. Let’s just recover here for an hour or so, and then move on.”

An hour later the squad was once again in formation to enter the next floor.

“Okay guys, we don’t know what’s out there, so everyone needs to be on their toes.”

“Actually,” Sam said, “we do know what’s out there.”

“What do you mean?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Well, every floor of the dungeon is known to the legion, right?”

“Yeah, so? They don’t tell us what the creatures are like on the floors. They want us to find it out for ourselves.”

“Yes, but they don’t tell us how we need to do that. All the information is available in the library. You just need to put in the work to find out.”

“.. I mean, that’s just not fair.”

“Well Jasper, they do expect us to study some of the time.”

“I thought that we’d learn everything during the training and on our own during diving the dungeon.”

“Nope. Some things we need to figure out on our own.”

Then Xanthe spoke up.

“I also didn’t know it, Sam. Could you maybe tell us what creatures there are on the fourth floor?”

“Sure, I guess. I’m not quite sure how the legions did it, but every floor of the dungeon will teach you some other thing about either fighting or surviving. It’s all repeated several times, as a high leveled individual won’t have a challenge on a lower floor. But for example, the third floor will teach you about swarms and numbers.”

“We knew that, pretty hard to mis with all those damned ants.”

Sam glared at Jasper for a moment before she continued.

“The fourth floor, is about agility based enemies. This one is about survival outside of the wall or the legions. The undead at the walls aren’t normally all that quick, but in the rest of the world there are a lot of those dangers. The legions won’t only teach us to fight the undead, but they will try to prepare us for other dangers out there.”

“Really, that’s pretty handy, Sam.”

“Thank you Xanthe. To get back to your question, there are fire hounds on the fourth floor. Those don’t really have all that much fire in them, they don’t breath fire or something like that. What they do have, is a bite that will literally burn you. If you get bitten, prepare for some pretty bad burn marks on your skin. They’re also really quick, and like fire they are unpredictable. Lastly is their ability to fight in packs. As most hounds, they have an instinct to form packs, of between four and seven hounds.”

“So make sure they don’t bite you, and there won’t be as many as the ants. Good enough for me, let’s go!”

“Yes Jasper, let’s go.”

Fifteen minutes after that conversation, the squad was fighting a pack of eight fire hounds. The hounds had ambushed them soon after they entered the floor, and they were quick enough that even after almost ten minutes of fighting, the squad hadn’t even managed to kill even one of them.

“I thought you said they only had packs of less than seven hounds!” Jasper shouted to Sam.

“Yeah, that’s the information in the library. I think we found another exception to the knowledge the legion has. The ants on the third floor were also different than normal. We might need to retreat from this delve and try our luck another time.”

“You mean if we survive this! Those damned mutts are faster than lightning! We should call them lightning hounds instead of fire hounds. They’re even dodging my arrows!”

“Then use your skills to kill them!”

“I can’t, I traded in those skills to get the recruit skills. I never thought we would fight such enemies while in the legion!”

“How about figuring out a way for the rest of us to hit them, then. You’re supposed to be the leader of this group, so act like one!”

It took some time, and help from the others before Jasper figured out a plan of action, but eventually he found a way to have the fighters slow down a hound long enough for the archers and mages to land their attacks. It still took two fighters, who couldn’t help hold the other hounds back. Thus both Sam and Erik had gotten injured while the others took down the first fire hound.

With one less hound to fight against though, the momentum shifted to the squad. Soon they managed to kill one hound after the other, while gathering some wounds themselves here and there. But eventually they downed the last of the hounds, and after harvesting the important bits of them, they retreated to the entrance of the fourth floor.

“You know, we still need to go back through the third floor. I don’t think that those ant will take it easy on us just because we want to go back to the surface.”

“Yeah, we still have a good fight in front of us. So we need to recuperate here once more, before we rush back.”

“Great, more waiting in this stinky place,”

“Stinky?”

“I don’t like it here, and we were waiting here a lot longer than the time we spent on the fourth floor and now we have to wait once again, so stinky.”

“Right.”