I followed Zack and Gary through the orange portal and entered a large underground cavern. I could see a ceiling far above us as I squinted in the dim light cast by the glowing gemstones embedded in the walls.

“It’s beautiful,” Gabrielle commented after she came through the portal. I nodded in awe as I looked around the massive area. Despite the wide-open space, I couldn’t see any monsters immediately, although they could grow like the ones outside the portal. There was only one other exit to the room at the far side of the empty chamber.

“Looks like the Essence is normal in the dungeon,” I said idly as we spread out by the portal. It was disappointing, but I had a larger store of Essence now, regardless.

“That’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s head towards the tunnel,” Gary pointed across the chamber. “We can check out the gemstones after.” Aaron looked over with a sigh and we started to head through the center of the large room. After a few steps piles of dirt started to form all across the room and the noise immediately stopped us.

“Hold our position, don’t let any get behind us,” Gary quickly said and I moved forwards to take the front with them. If these monsters were only made of dirt I could probably damage them with a strike or skill. As I moved forwards I scanned the room and saw dozens of the monsters forming, while larger shapes grew at the edges of the room.

“Barkskin,” I cast on myself as I rushed to meet the charge of the waist-high dirt monsters. I slashed through the monster's head as it threw a packed ball of dirt into my shield and cursed when the cut didn’t affect it at all.

“Center of the chest!” Aaron shouted as he sent an arrow slamming into another one of the monsters in front of me. I started to slowly back away as I blocked the weak attacks the monsters were sent at me. Even though the attacks weren’t too strong I was being constantly bombarded with dirt.

“Thornbolt”

“Thornbolt,” I jumped back to dodge most of the attacks and sent two Thornbolts wildly in front of me to try to take some pressure off. We were pushed back to the portal and there were dozens of the monsters sending their ranged attacks towards us.

“Meteor,” Gabrielle cast directly in front of us into the packed group of the small monsters and Gary immediately charged the group in the confusion. I scanned the battle and saw Zack handling a smaller pack while Gary pushed in the center to buy Aaron and Gabrielle some room to fight. I took a deep breath and focused on casting Thornbolt as accurately as I could to thin them out.

“Gary!” I shouted a few moments later to grab his attention. Eight of the rock monsters had fully grown and were slowly heading towards us.

“We can’t fight that many at once, do you have enough Essence to hold a few of them?” Gary asked as he gestured for us to retreat to the portal. There were still tons of the smaller monsters forming around the room, but we had cleared the majority of the ones that rushed us in the first wave.

“I could hold three, maybe, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I replied worriedly as I watched the monster steady approach. “Let’s retreat, for now, Gary. We’ll come back with full Essence.”

“All right, out of the portal, let’s see if they follow us out,” Gary nodded and jogged through the portal. I followed him through after a final glance back to the stream of monsters steadily forming and walking towards us. I joined the rest of my team as we waited for a few minutes outside of the portal, but nothing came through.

“Well, we’re going to need a new plan,” Aaron said as we sat watching the portal. With the increased Essence recovery in the mountains, I was already back to full Essence within a few minutes of returning.

“What if we rush to the rocks and destroy them, first?” Zack suggested. I nodded, it had worked when we found them outside the portal.

“Then we’ll be trapped on the other side of the chamber, if we can’t get back we could be in trouble. Even as we left they kept forming,” Gabrielle said with a shake of her head.

“The dirt they threw didn’t hurt too much, I’m sure we could force our way through them if we needed to,” Zack responded with a shrug.

“Speak for yourself, not all of us had Barkskin on, those things hurt,” Aaron said with a wince.

“Rejuvenation,” I walked over and cast on him. “I didn’t know you got hit.”

“I think our only option will be to push into the room and try to destroy the rocks as they form, then turn to deal with the others,” Gary said. “We could have Eli cast Barkskin on all five of us to make sure we can retreat if we have to.” We moved back through the portal as soon as my Essence fully recovered. Gary led us into the chamber and we followed alongside one of the walls as we rushed to the first of the rock monsters. By the time we were halfway through the room, the small monsters had begun to start sending their dirt missiles at us, but Barkskin allowed us to shrug off anything that managed to hit us. We made our way through the room and took out the first four of the monsters while they were still forming by the time we reached the tunnel.

“Backs to the tunnel!” Gary shouted as we jogged away from the latest of the rock monsters. The monster was nearly ten feet tall and seemed like it was nearly finished forming when we destroyed the core. Dozens of the smaller monsters were flooding towards us and I doubted we could finish any more of the larger monsters easily.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I moved behind Zack and Gary as they stood at the entrance of the tunnel. I had a good amount of Essence, but I was hesitant to spend any on fighting right now. Gabrielle sent a Meteor forward to clear out a large group of the smaller monsters once they started to become overwhelming and I used the respite to cast Barkskin on Zack, Gary, and myself. The skill had some more time left but I didn’t want to risk it ending during a crucial moment when we were fighting.

“Thanks, going to need you upfront for this, Eli,” Gary said hurriedly as we watched the mass of monsters steadily moving closer to us. The mass of smaller monsters was now supported by the four bulky monsters made entirely of rock while more of both formed behind them. Zack looked worried as I nodded to him from his side and I heard Aaron muttering something to Gabrielle quietly behind me.

“Meteor,” Gabrielle cast again and I assumed drained her entire core of essence, but the skill killed and scattered the front lines of the monsters.

“Fortress,” Zack yelled right after Gabrielle’s spell and I watched a large shield form in front of the tunnel. Four massive bangs filled the tunnel with noise right after the shield appeared and I turned to check Zack worriedly.

“I can handle a few of those with my skill, but if any of us got hit by one we’d be in trouble,” Zack reported immediately as he saw everyone turn to him. I hadn’t seen the rocks the monsters had thrown at us, but they must have been large to create that sound.

Gary cursed and slammed his spear into the ground, “Retreat into the tunnel, we need a better position to fight them,” I swallowed and nodded. Zack led the way and dropped his skill a few moments later as we took off down the tunnel at a jog. I glanced behind us as we continued down the straight tunnel and saw nothing had followed us into the tunnel.

“They stopped,” I said as I slowed to a stop. The rest of my team came to a stop around me and I wondered if the monsters couldn’t leave that room of the dungeon. If the room reset the way it did when we left the dungeon, we’d be able to get back through easily.

“Let’s recover our Essence before we move any deeper, then. Who knows when we’ll run into something else,” Aaron suggested as we caught our breath.

“Good plan. I’m not sure how we can handle that room once the rock elementals are fully formed,” Gary said worriedly as he peered back at the chamber.

“Is that what they’re called? The monsters might settle back into the ground if we’re gone long enough,” I commented. “Besides, I’m sure we can make it out if we need to.”

“Maybe…” Zack trailed off as he glanced back. “The rocks those elementals threw were big, I don’t think even I could block one with my shield, and it stopped advancing once it started casting the spell at us.”

“If we have full Essence I’m sure I and Gabrielle can take out two or three of the rock elementals, I’m sure,” Aaron said.

“Yeah, but by the time we destroy those, four more will already be heading towards us,” Gabrielle crossed her arms as she leaned against the rock. “There’s no way we can clear that room.”

“Who says we need to?” I asked. “We can get back through when we need to head out of the dungeon. We’re going to keep going, right?” Everyone responded that they wanted to keep exploring the dungeon and we decided to take a short rest before heading further down the tunnel. I pulled my Status up idly as I relaxed on my pack.

Eli - Lvl 5 Druid

Experience - 230\10000

Strength-11

Dexterity-11

Perception-10

Vitality-10

Spirit-13

Willpower-12

Barkskin - Level 8\10 Upgradeable

Experience - 380\12800

Thornbolt - Level 6\20 Upgradeable

Experience - 2390\6400

Rejuvenation - Level 5\10 Upgradeable

Experience - 690\3200

Snaring Roots - Level 1\10 Upgradeable

Experience - 12\200

“We earned more than double the experience we got from clearing out an Awakened camp, just from our fights today,” I said as we started down the tunnel. “Not to mention my skill experience…”

Gabrielle sighed loudly, “Eli, you're so obsessed, seriously. We’re literally in a dungeon.”

“You know I was joking about liking you more the higher level your Barkskin is, right?” Aaron laughed. We kept chatting quietly as we walked for more than an hour down the plain tunnel until we reached an opening, which we approached carefully. As we drew close I could see there was a large room with odd rock formations jutting out from the ground and down from the ceiling throughout the cavern. I could tell that it was a large room, but most of it was blocked from view.

“That’s crystal,” Aaron pointed wide-eyed at an opaque crystal shooting up from the ground. As I studied the room I saw oddly colored rocks everywhere I looked, and the dim light from the gemstones gave the room an ominous feel. The way the rocks cast jagged shadows throughout the rocky area made it seem like we would be walking into a trap as soon as we entered.

“I don’t know,” Gary sighed heavily as he studied the room in front of us. “Maybe this dungeon is too difficult for us.” No one replied for a minute as I watched everyone thinking over the dungeon.

“It will be challenging, but I don’t think this is too much for us to handle,” I said thoughtfully. “We can either look for places like this dungeon to keep challenging ourselves and improve quickly as we have been. Or,” I said slowly, “we can keep fighting Awakened for a few months until we reach level six.”

“I don’t think any of us wants to go back to the Bloodfields, but we could keep searching the mountains for other dungeons, trolls, or smaller groups of hobgoblins,” Gabrielle said.

“I don’t want to give up, yet,” Gary said as we stood by the entrance to the next chamber. “If anyone is injured, we can pull back to the tunnel and have Eli heal us while we recover our Essence. I don’t want to be like the other E-ranks, happy to sit and wait in town for a month between their time advancing. I don’t think any of you do, either.” Everyone nodded seriously and I felt a smile creep onto my face as I stood.

“Let’s do it,” I grinned.