Chapter 25: A Long March
DM received an alert.
“Oh, what now?” A party entered his dungeon. An impressive party, with an assassin at the head.
“Uh oh…”
DM knew he had some time before anyone reached him in the boss chamber on floor 6. After all, just the first floor alone would take some time to traverse:
[https://i.imgur.com/ikXyEm5.jpg]
The other floors were slightly different but their routes were similarly lengthy. This layout’s purpose was to both physically and mentally exhaust the intruders. Every few steps, they’d have to check left and right for threats hiding in the alcoves. It would take so long to reach the bottom floor at this pace that monsters destroyed on the first floor would have time to replenish in the lower floors as something else.
In theory, the best strategy to counter this dungeon type was for a very small group of maybe two to three strong people to run, tanking the occasional hit. They could pause to recover at the stairway leading down to each new floor.
That strategy wouldn’t work for this party. The assassin was trailed by about a dozen knights as well as two mages. They wouldn’t be able to proceed quickly. The group’s average level was about 15, same as the group of four that previously explored the Lower Gordu Forest the first time DM noticed this assassin.
Choosing a formation would be challenging. Walking more than two or three abreast wasn’t possible due to the narrow portions of the hallways. Even in a triple-file line, five rows meant the party needed to defend against attacks from the side along a considerable length from front to back. Other than a level and numbers advantage, DM could only think of one other way they had an edge in this situation: They needed to protect only two members from basic attacks. Still, two mages meant, at most, two dedicated healers. Their MP would be taxed.
As usual, DM positioned infected minions within the walls, floor, and ceiling in order to monitor the intruders. He suspected the party had finalized their strategies before entering the dungeon, but surely they’d need to update their plans after witnessing the interior. Based on what DM had previously overheard as well as his observation of the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest, most people would find his own dungeon quite unusual.
“It looks like my exploration of the other dungeon will need to wait.” DM actually wanted to guide the charmed spider, courtesy of Bandit, back to the boss chamber and experiment with the console from afar. At a minimum, he needed to wait for the girls’ party to exit, for safety. Regardless, he didn’t have time to focus on that now. “I wish I had some parallel minds ability… This is all getting really hard to keep up with…”
For now, the biggest challenge was no different than it was on day one. Most of the people coming for his head were likely innocent. The assassin was one thing, but the rest of the knights and the mages were surely here on the orders of their Lord to eliminate a perceived threat to the city. They were too strong as a group to simply overpower and send on their merry way, DM thought. Maybe he could win if he was willing to kill them all, but was he?
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The first room of this dungeon was unlike anything Barney had seen before. Straight ahead, a long hallways vanished into the darkness. Symmetric columns lined both sides as far as the eye could see. No way in hell was this layout generated randomly. Someone, or something, had made the dungeon look just like this.
“I’ve finally seen it for myself…” he trailed off. The rest of his party caught up, and one of the knights even gasped. Another spoke for the rest of the group.
“Sir Barney, I can see why the Lord was so concerned about this place."
“Not this place,” another knight corrected. “The one controlling it. Salazar, was it?”
“That is not confirmed,” one of the two female mages from the back called out. “All we know for sure is the dungeon is controlled by its dungeon master.”
Another knight began, “Sir Barney, what will we do if we don’t encounter anything unusual in this dungeon? I don’t have much experience in dungeons, but even I know that defeating the dungeon master won’t accomplish anything. It will just spawn again after we depart, right?”
“Leave that to me,” the assassin replied. “When we’re finished, prepare to backtrack and return to the Twin Cities.”
“Very well. If only you’d tell us what level the dungeon is…”
“Quiet. Let’s go.” Barney wasn’t known as the polite type.
The two mages were positioned near the middle of the group. They proceeded in two columns, stopping to peer into each alcove as they went. After repeating this process several times, they paused.
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“Could there be no enemies throughout?” one of the two knights leading the procession asked.
“It’s possible, but we should keep our guards up,” the knight to his left answered.
“Keep moving,” Barney instructed from further back.
“Sheesh.”
They quickened their pace, merely glancing at each alcove before proceeding to the next one. Then, they heard an echoing howl. They froze.
“I suppose there are monsters around, then.”
They slowed to their original pace again. The end of the hallway came into view, although they still had a ways to go to get there. It still wasn’t clear if the next hallway was accessible from the end of this one, or not.
“Keep on the lookout for any doors or hard-to-see passages,” a female knight from further in the back advised. As Barney recalled, she was one of the few knights with former experience as an adventurer, brief as it probably was.
One of the mages grunted and fell down. Everyone turned to see a chameleon, invisibility wearing off. It must have dropped from the ceiling on to the mage. As the nearest knights brought down their weapons on the monster, an elemental-type monster emerged from the next alcove and launched a fireball from the air above it directly to one of the lead knights. Of course, the knight was facing backwards, having turned to look at the commotion involving the chameleon, so he was caught unaware.
The fireball didn’t deal much damage, but it was quite a surprise. Just as the lead knights moved in to strike down the elemental, a floating red ball of mana, one of the rear-most knights took an ice spear in his side. Similarly, the surprise was more noteworthy than the raw damage. As that monster, a floating blue ball, was being dispatched, a tentacle rose from an opening in the floor and grabbed the other mage.
She looked down at the sensation of her ankle being grabbed. The knights around her were too distracted between the three other enemies to even realize that she was under attack. Before calling out for help, she tried whacking the tentacle with her staff. The attack seemed effective, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to remove the tentacle by itself. As she lifted up her staff for a second hit, the knight next to her noticed her plight and prepared to attack with his sword, carefully, as well.
She felt a tingling sensation like her body had been resisting status effects, on account of her level, her gear, or both. As her staff descended on the weakened tentacle, her muscles suddenly locked up. Her body collapsed on to its side, likely paralyzed with magic. Although paralyzed, her senses were still functional. Falling didn’t noticeably hurt her, but she could feel her MP decreasing, as though it was being sucked out of her.
Just as the mage began to panic, the knight plunged its sword into the tentacle, destroying it. Having defeated the four enemies, the group looked around, eyes darting from spot to spot, searching for the next enemy. After a few moments, the tension eased.
“Th—That was as bad as training under the watchful eyes of the knight commander!”
Several other knights laughed nervously.
“Just what in the hell was that!?” the female knight with adventuring experience screamed out.
“That’s why we’re here!” Barney shouted in response. “We are here to vanquish the evil based in this dungeon, whether monster or human in origin! We march on.”
“Um, one of our mages is in no condition to do that…” observed the knight who had defeated the tentacle.
The mage who had originally weathered a falling chameleon stepped over and assessed her comrade. “She was paralyzed during the battle. Hold on.” She pointed her staff at the patient. “Restoration!” The other mage’s body glowed for a moment.
“Thank you.” The recovered mage returned to her feet. Neither she, nor anybody else, had actually received substantial damage, although her MP was down roughly ten percent despite having not used magic yet in the dungeon. Her comrade had used a small amount of MP as well.
“Okay, let’s go.” Barney nudged the group to continue.
Ten seconds after the group had resumed their trek, an invisible monster fell on the same mage again. She toppled, as before. The knights at the front and back, rather than turning to respond, smartly maintained awareness for new enemies, not wanting to receive unexpected magic attacks again.
As the people around the targeted mage worked to eliminate this second chameleon, a tentacle spawned next to the other mage and struck her with a tentacle slap. She screamed and was blown into the side of a knight, who fell down while doing the best he could to cradle her in his arms.
“How do we defend from attacks that come out of nowhere!?” another knight bellowed, his voice echoing down the hallway. His temper wasn’t the only one flaring. Unlike adventurers who try to prepare for anything, knights were all about honor, dignity, and fair combat. They expected dirty tricks from criminals, but weren’t used to being toyed with.
“Calm down!” Barney seemed to be getting sick of having to babysit everyone. “Nobody is seriously hurt! Heal her and let’s go.”
As one mage healed the other, the female knight with adventuring experience weighed in again. “Sir Barney, our mages are being targeted. It’s not uncommon for monsters to attack less-armored adventurers first, but I’ve never heard of anything like this. This is psychological warfare!” She turned to look at the mage who had been struck twice by invisible falling monsters. The mage’s facial expression was indeed one of mental fatigue and exhaustion.
“The enemy is clearly evil! You’re knights! This is your job!”
“Uh, we’re not knights…” the other mage noted as she completed casting her heal spell.
“You work for the same Lord we all do and you will do your job. I was tasked to lead this subjugation. We proceed.”
Barney heard a few grumbled words but the group resumed their march.
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“After being in a dungeon for a while, there’s nothing like seeing the sunlight again!” Rufus shouted cheerfully as his party, as well as Kat’s, exited the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest. “Oh?”
The thief who had received a love tap from Bandit previously was arguing with another group of adventurers. The black mage leading Rufus’s party intervened.
“What’s going on here?”
“They’re accusing us of all kinds of shit because I’m standing guard outside the dungeon or something.”
The black mage turned to this new party for an explanation.
“Hah, we were right to be suspicious. What are you doing leveling up a bunch of beast-folk in a dungeon?”
“We’re not doing anything,” the black mage insisted.
“You all must be from the south.”
“So?”
“This is the Nar Union, you know.”
“So?”
“Just because you can’t get human women to look at you doesn’t mean you should bring beast girls into our country.”
“We’re not—“ The black mage paused to look at his party’s thief. “With one exception, that doesn’t describe us at all!”