With everything figured out, Doyle turns back to the seventh floor. His grand masterpiece is coming along and was a major reason why he didn’t even consider the engraver path. It had likely come about because of how much engraving he had done. However, it wasn’t complete. This, this would be a crowning achievement.
While simple one word paths have a power in simplicity, Doyle felt something when he saw the path. That wasn’t the place for him to start down that path. So now Doyle focuses on engraving the large orb of stone, setting up the boundaries upon which future work would be done. Time passes and he barely turns away when his passive flow of world energy into the power storage option finally finishes. Only looking away long enough to confirm the rewards and move the world energy flow to buying the naming skill.
{Mana Stone pattern lv30 acquired
Spirit Stone pattern lv30 acquired
Monster Stone pattern lv30 acquired
PsiCrystal pattern lv30 acquired
Karma Star pattern lv30 acquired
Luck Stone pattern lv30 acquired
Elementally Energized Crystal pattern lv30 acquired
Prana Lotus pattern lv30 acquired
Bloodstone pattern lv30 acquired
Mana Stone, Spirit Stone, Monster Stone, PsiCrystal, Karma Star, Luck Stone, Elementally Energized Crystal, Prana Lotus, and Bloodstone patterns merged into Mystic Energy Storage Patterns lv33}
The next interruption, however, wasn’t something Doyle could easily turn away from. The town had what was at this point long ago, discovered the change to the instances. Though their guess on that was mostly that it had shifted around to take into account the amount of traffic the first floor was getting.
An idea that when Doyle heard it, decided to make it the truth. A few tweaks and a rule or two changed up how the instances worked. He could still move them around as he wanted, but if left alone and too many people tried to take advantage of a floor with fewer instances, they would shift to compensate.
All that aside, Ace and Jim had decided that the boss floor had stymied them for too long. While they had been fine with taking their time at the start, that was months ago now. Doyle had to pause when he heard that and check in with Ally. But no, it was the truth. Between two and three months had passed since they had first made it to the fifth floor and while the combat was still difficult, the teams weren’t advancing fast enough anymore.
The kobolds had stopped getting better and with the lack of new challenges the founders started to stagnate, which Ace could not allow. So to bust through to the next floor Ace and Jim had joined their parties together as well as bringing along Doctor to provide healing. So Doyle was now staring down a baker’s dozen of the strongest humans on the planet.
He wasn’t necessarily worried about this. If anything, this was a good chance to watch how the boss floor reacted to someone breaking the party size limit. Still, this was a worrying development as far as Doyle was concerned, but also a warning. He didn’t plan to change the difficulty of the boss floor, but it showed that if Doyle tried to play hard with a floor, they would be more than willing to follow through.
All that, however, can wait. One of the parties had blitzed through the fourth floor and the other seven were now catching up so Doyle pulled back and let his mind encompass the fifth floor. He could already sense everything, but delving deeper into it allowed what he considered as more of a dungeon’s view.
The first six delvers go through the portal and nothing much changes. The nameless kobold boss lounges on her throne wondering when the next incursion would come. In steps the seventh delver though, and She sits up as if just shocked. A bloody aura spills out, killing intent suffuses the throne room as She roars a command to her troops.
All the delvers have entered the boss floor at this point and they make short work of the patrol that got caught out. Jim’s ears perk up as the sounds of their combat dies down, “The boss knows we’re breaking the rules! Prepare for a swarm though going by the town, I think we might be committed to a siege.”
Jack laughs as he bounces his giant bronze mace on his shoulder. “I think I can bust their gate wide open!”
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Sammy smacks him upside the head, “All the while they attack from above you. Leave the sieging to the magical types.”
Ace gestures and the group goes silent as Jim puts his ear to the floor. Jim shakes his head, “Siege it is then. There was another patrol around but with the boss roaring their head off they retreated.”
Back in the center of the floor the boss has left her room and is stomping around the town square as every monster gathers. Even the cattle, goats, and wolves have been pulled in, with the five kobold herders taking command of their flock.
Up on the walls are the ten mages and the one commander with a bow, the floors only ranged threat. Still, with the support of the six healers the chance of any of them going down to anything short of a one hit kill is near zero. Nevermind that most of the founder’s ranged threat comes from magic as well and so things would likely fall into a counterspell battle.
Ace, wearing summoned vine armor, leads the group out into the middle section of the floor. That armor instantly proves to have been a good idea as an arrow smacks him right over his heart. The arrow quivers as a good half inch of it is sunk into the wood. Kellinger is about to cast a spell but Ace shakes his head, “There aren’t enough archers up there to make a windshield worth it. They’ll mostly be using magic.”
And he wasn’t wrong. Now that they have a target, the ten mages begin to cast their spells at a sedate pace. Just slow enough that by the time they are casting the next spell, they have recovered from the first. Later on, there will be time to cast spells like a madman. As it is though, both sides recognize a situation that could easily fall into a stalemate. The nameless boss isn’t going to let that happen, however.
These invaders had broken the covenant. While She didn’t care all that much about how they fought, the limit was six. Even if each of those six had the ability to summon an army, it wouldn’t matter. But they had entered with more than double that and so She waited. More and more invaders entered into the center hollow and still She waited.
However, once they had made it halfway to the gate despite the kobold mages’ attempts to pepper them with magic, She gave the order and the gates opened.
On the other side, Ace watched as the wooden gates part. But that wasn’t the focus of his time. No, he knew what such an action meant and so instead focused on some magic suited for the grass covered field. As he finishes the first spell, the grass right in front of them bursts upward to form a solid wall of plant matter.
This blocks their sight for the moment it takes them to get up on the prepared walkway. Once the town is visible again, they can see over 150 animals being led by five stone wolves charging their way. Oh, and while Doyle hadn’t meant it to happen, the five herders were riding out with their charges, atop the level six goats.
Kellinger wastes no time in laying down a grease spell. This manages to slow most of the stampede but the stone wolves prove to be above such tricks. While the spell does make it near impossible to find purchase on the surface it is attached to, the stone wolves don’t depend on that to stay up. No, instead, they use their innate magic to anchor each step to the ground.
Now well in the front, they reach the grass wall, trampling over Ace’s second spell that had stealthily converted the nearby grass into sturdy needles. Unfazed by this, the five wolves leap and handily make it to the top of the wall. Quite the impressive feat for what some might see as normal wolves with stone slabs glued to the sides.
Though unfortunately for the wolves, their achievement is short-lived. Jack alone smashes three of them back with his mace while Bill and Tess knock away one each. This doesn’t slow the attack though as the next fastest of the monsters arrives as the five wind wolves leap up onto the wall as well.
Not only that, but through the use of their wind the five are able to push back the nearby defenders. For the most part, that is. Jack manages to smash one of the wind wolves head in with his backswing. While that might not be possible with the stone wolves, the wind wolves clearly sacrifice some of their defense to move fasters.
Then the magic happened. Fire swept out over the field, setting light to the grass and igniting the grease stuck to the charging animals. This alone was enough to take out the ten dungeon wolves as the spell was a cooperative effort between Ruby, Kelly, and Kellinger. On the other hand, the remaining four wind wolves are taken out by a much more mundane method.
Og Pwner had been set up with a number of nasty items to throw around. Nasty items that the wind wolves were now intimately familiar with as the shards of glassy rock cut deeper with each movement. Of course he had been aiming to also do something about the stone wolves, but literal slabs of rock tend to stop that.
Jim, in turn is firing his arrows nonstop to slow down the massive numbers of goats and cattle coming their way. While this doesn’t work so well against the cattle, it does thin the herd. Not that he has much time to do so. Even with the grease and the fire, there just is not enough space between them and the kobold’s town gate.
Good thing Ace’s sharpened grass did a lot better against most of the hooves. Only the earthen cattle have an easy time as they speed up and ram the wall. Well, they try to at least. All that extra material to get the grass to grow into a wall had to come from somewhere and that was right in front of the wall itself.
The wolves had skipped the ditch made almost invisible by grass. Cattle and goats? Not so much. Instead, the front line takes a tumble and so does the line just behind them. Though speaking of the wolves, at this point, all of them had been taken out. Ace had animated the grass wall so it would grab the wolves and the Barrai’s made short work of them with a dagger being inserted into certain unprotected spots like the neck.
Down below, most of the cattle that fell are having a hard time standing up with only the earthen cows doing alright. It takes just a minor act of earth magic on their part to raise proper platforms. Though not before, Ruby once again shows why she is the town’s top fire mages. Ribbons of liquid fire spew out of her hands wherever it lands, it sticks. A feature that the cattle and goats below are finding most unpleasant as the substance continues to burn.