CHAPTER 270 – KOBOLDS
There was no question about which door they were departing from. This zone had two possible exits to the next level. One was to a zone that was depicted as grasslands, which would have an almost certain kill everything quest, while the second was a series of twisting underground tunnels, where starting with a map gave you a massive advantage. The fact it contained a treasure room was the icing on the cake.
They entered the exit tunnel with the humans and the Sanatio’s Chosen travelling as one group. It was not a short trip. For thirty minutes, they walked briskly down the straight, steadily descending tunnel.
It was monotonous.
His stone jacket shifted and changed with every step, and no one said anything. The atmosphere was oppressive, dull and unchanging. There were no turns or twists, the slightly rough walls had no interesting patterns on them and the glowing moss that grew at the point the dripping water hit the edge between the walls and the floor remained an even two centimetres high and five thick. Everything was static.
Finally, there was a change. Ahead of them there was a massive stone door.
It was the zone exit. They looked at each other and made a point of ensuring they exited as a group. They were pretty sure the sanatio’s chosen were not at risk of getting rejected, but it was better not to risk it.
While they had verbally acknowledged that their quest was listed as complete, they had also admitted that they had not received a quest summary screen. Not even one that said their contribution had been zero percent.
That was different enough that he feared that some magic would stop the chosen from passing, but when they hurried through as a group, nothing triggered. Within a minute, they were all in a new zone.
There was a ding to indicate a quest had been delivered.
As always, Tom waited for his turn before stepping into the system room.
Quest: Individually collect 20 Platningite Ore.
This is an individual quest and can not be completed in a group. Each person can absorb the ore at a touch so it doesn’t take up inventory space. Platningite Ore can be found in locations of interest or on the slain bodies of significant kobolds and lesser ones with a significantly reduced drop rate.
Tom read the quest and shrugged at the details. The individual condition was interesting, but they had expected this to be a gather quest, just not one that could also be satisfied by being a murderhobo.
He left the system room, and they continued along the boring tunnel. Five minutes later the passage they were following opened up into a wider space with familiar features they were beginning to associate as being a safe room. The most noticeable component was that the area felt safe. Tom had ignored it for the first few because he was not willing to trust a feeling like that as usually it meant something was screwing with your brain and you in danger of imminent death. In this trial, the rules were consistent enough for him to trust the patterns, but even so, his eyes studied everything as he searched for enemies.
The room was a wide open space with four dingy looking tunnels departing from it. Tom wondered what would happen if the dragon or the giant found this zone. They would clearly be incapable of using the tunnel. What did that mean? Would the zone’s nature change or would they be directed to a more appropriate zone to clear? A problem for the GODs, but one he had no doubt they had solved.
Everlyn consulted her memory crystal and pointed. “That one.”
The two of them entered their chosen tunnel without hesitation.
When they had learned that it was kobolds, he had been worried about tunnels like the goblin ones. Michael, Clare and Keikain had fought them in the tutorial and their experiences had varied. One of Clare’s fights and Michaels had been in terrible conditions where they couldn’t stand straight, but the other two had pleasant experiences.
This tunnel, luckily, was a good one. There was sufficient height to stand comfortably, and they could fight three abreast. Only Thor with his over head hammer swings and maybe Michael now with his axes would have their fighting styles hampered by the confines of the tunnel.
Tom personally was happy to be surrounded by rock once more. He felt empowered. A part of him basked in the feeling. His Earth Sense swept down the tunnel, cataloguing everything. There were spots that would allow him to cause localised rockfalls. He smiled at the thought. It would be interesting to be able to fight while turning the environment against everyone else.
His senses stretched out further.
That was unexpected.
His hand grabbed Everlyn before she could step forward. His mind tried to interpret what he was seeing. The shapes were distinctive. The layer of rocks served a single purpose. “Wait. It’s trapped.” He warned her.
She glanced at him unconcerned a clear veteran of the tutorial. “Where and what type?”
He pointed at a smooth stretch of floor that to his eyes appeared to be the same as the rest of the ground. “That’s a pitfall trap. There’s also a deadfall further on.”
She shrugged out of his grip and danced forward to where he had pointed. Her senses clearly saw a difference because she moved smoothly around the relatively small area of brittle stone. “Interesting. It’s good work. The cap has been magically crafted.”
“The insides have been excavated by picks.”
“While,” she glanced over her shoulder and further down the tunnel. “The dead fall is a hundred percent by hand.” She returned to stand next to him and studied the tunnel, her hand drumming on her side. “Do you feel up to being a trap sweeper.”
“You want me to trigger and disable everything magically as we go?”
“I think that’ll be the fastest way. If I’m manually deactivating everything…” She shuddered. “That’ll be a slog.”
“Magical clearing is pretty mana intensive.”
“And doing it by hand is time consuming. If you get some smart lesser earth elementals to help, that might reduce the load.”
“Yeah one with the right mindset would. Hopefully, it’ll also help me spot things that I would otherwise miss.”
The elder surged forward and drew level with him.
They both turned to face it.
“Leader Tom. We can provide service?”
“You can see the traps?” Everlyn asked, sounding surprising.
The creature sunk toward the ground and orientated on Everlyn. “Perceptive one, unfortunately that requires different strata’s that is beyond my humble reach. Our command of planet nature is limited. We are principally crafters of living fabric, not the planet. But we can ably empower Leader Tom by inducing mana.”
They looked blankly at the elder.
“Perceptive one, how can I phrase this. Leader Tom’s mana recharge will be sped by three.”
Everlyn looked sideways at him. “I know you’re reluctant, but if what the elder says is accurate.”
“Perceptive one. It is.”
“You should be able to do it. The noise created will be problematic, but I don’t see we have any other practical choice.”
“If that’s what’s for the best.” He glanced over at Keikain.
“I’ll find out if he can relieve you when your mana drops too low,” Everlyn promised immediately.
Tom retreated a few steps and then surrounded by allies he summoned a lesser earth elemental. For this purpose, the nature of the creature he was contracting was the most important aspect. So he chose not to send in a contract that any elemental that reached it could accept. Instead, when he punched through the earth plane, he went himself to assess the options available.
The oppressive energy suffocated him. It felt stifling and heavy, but with his high affinity it was easy enough to endure and on a deeper level was strangely soothing. The splash he made attracted multiple, lesser elementals to him. Rather than accepting the first to arrive he assessed their personalities looking for one that would work. Dumb, Industrious, Playful, Lazy, Driven, Inquisitive.
Without hesitation, he took the inquisitive personality; it was exactly what he was after. Both driven and industrious in other circumstances would have been great pickups, but not for today. To get through the tunnels, he needed one that could think by itself and discover traps that his own magic and brain might not recognise. As the saying went, two pairs of eyes, or in this case two pairs of earth sensing abilities was better than one.
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The negotiations with the creative mind he was targeting went smoothly. That did not surprise Tom at all. He was offering the elemental a job that it was naturally suited for, a chance to explore and learn stuff. With its personality, Tom only had to dangle the opportunity, and it was willing to offer the lowest rewards the system would allow.
The contract crackled into being, and it landed on his shoulder like a bowling ball. Unlike a bowling ball, it kept jiggling from side to side in excitement. His bone structure in the area turned to stone to let him more easily support it weight.
Explore now? It asked excitedly. A jumble of images struck at the same time as the words expressing its yearning to get going.
Tom couldn’t bring himself to crush its spirit, so his return message with all the details overflowed with enthusiasm. He showed the traps he could sense and other ideas that could allow stone to kill. He even for good measure conveyed a basis of an understanding of wooden and metal traps and while the elemental wouldn’t be able to interact with them directly, it could definitely intuit their existence by weight and the presence of empty space.
I can’t. The stuttered words came back to him. This wood and metal I can’t do anything with it.
“I know,” he told the wisp. “But you can find them and bring it to my attention. I’ll give you more exciting tasks if you do.”
And you will keep showing me fun stuff? The voice came with the image of what was basically a bear trap snapping shut.
“Correct,” he smiled. “Let’s go.”
The chosen was taking their job seriously and his mana was recharging at a pace he had never experienced before. Tom strode forward. Like he had told the wisp, not all the traps they were going to face would be built with earth, so Everlyn walked next to him.
“Your interactions with the elemental is so cute.”
He ignored her, already focusing on Earth Sense. What he was doing was a chance to take steps towards his domain. The pitfall trap collapsed as they approached, leaving a hole that was easy to walk around. There was a crash ahead of him as he triggered the deadfall. They kept advancing. The stone wall distorted as the mechanism to release spears was removed. A precariously placed boulder shifted backward into a depression that formed behind it. Gravity would hold it in place.
They continued at a steady pace. Another pit fall crumbled away ahead of them.
“Noisy?” Everlyn observed.
“Not much I can do about that if we want to go quickly.”
“We’re fighting kobold clans. You do this and they’ll hear, and you can guarantee they’ll plan for us.”
Tom shrugged. “We need to clear the traps or else it is dangerous for everyone else. Plus, what are they going to prepare for? All they are hearing is the noise. They’re going to think an indestructible elephant is coming their way?”
Everlyn smiled at that. “You’re right they won’t predict the creature making this noise is a squishy low ranked human.”
Another deadfall trap triggered, drowning out the last bit of her sentence.
“Stealth sometimes has its place. I know if you and I snuck forward there’s a good chance we’ll be able to do a lot of damage before they notice us. But they will see us and given where the traps were they have been primed with knowledge of the zone entrance. They’re going to be on the alert. No matter how sneaky we would try to be they would detect us before we killed too many. Plus, we need to get everyone else experience not just us.”
“These fights will be hard.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the other competitor race they were with. Her face conveyed frustration. “And if the chosen wouldn’t even kill the foranca to save themselves, they won’t help in battle here.”
“Perceptive one, that’s not true.” They both jumped as neither of them had heard the elder move up until it was right behind them. “We won’t kill semi-sapients, but our paths are varied. In a fight of sapient versus non, we only have a single path we may pursue. None worthy will perish on our watch.”
Tom really did not want to unpack that. “The mana contribution by itself is material.” He assured Everlyn. “If they can give a similar boost to the magic damage dealers, the benefit will be significant.”
There was another crash as a false tunnel in front of them was collapsed in full. The very stone under his feet vibrated and there were puffs of dust coming out of the stone above them.
“You didn’t have to do that. We weren’t going down it, anyway!”
Tom smiled. “This is sort of fun.”
Another boulder trap was disabled at a thought. The earth elemental was continually reporting new finds and when it did, Tom updated his filters. He was developing Earth Sense but not Remote Earth Manipulation. He was still at a loss at what he could do to bend that spell to his aims. Tom was beginning to suspect it was a trap and Remote Earth Manipulation would not help him get his domain, but for a trap sweeper it was the best tool he possessed.
Ahead of them there was a tight turn that opened up into a large room. He suspected a massive cavern, but he couldn’t see it and Earth Sense only extended fifteen metres into the space. It was at least that big with high ceilings.
Everlyn had already stopped her head tilted as she listened and her bow appeared in her hand. “Any traps?”
She had used her party chat to lower the noise, and he responded in kind. “No. Straight after the turn, there is a large cavern.”
“I’ll check it out.” Next to him Everlyn became harder to see. She crouched and then slowly stalked forward. Tom was used to this. His own spear was balanced in his hand ready to destroy anything that attacked.
She vanished around the corner. Four minutes passed while they waited.
“The kobolds have set up an ambush. They are arranged with cross bows twenty metres from the entrance. Twenty fighters all with cross bows, four magic users.” There was a pause. “My recommendation is that you create a stone shield for the golem to carry and have it use the dust storm. The golem charges them to draw the cross bolts and then you guys come at them in its wake.”
They set up as planned. Tom inputted the required actions into the control orb. “I’m ready.”
Everlyn completed the countdown.
The golem exploded forward!
It scampered along the ground with the thin rock shield held in front of it. A cyclone of dust swirled up around it. Not enough to conceal it, yet, but sufficient to sting delicate eye balls.
There was a series of overlapping cracks following by the tinging sound of metal on rock.
The kobolds had unleashed their volley of arrows, and that was the signal. The humans charged out into the cavern. Michael and Toni on the right, defended by Rahmat and Clare while Tom and the others were on the left. He sprinted until he was ten metres from the ambush point that was now a wall of spinning dust that hid his golem and the enemy monsters.
He hoped his golem would survive.
Two rocks were in his hand and while he couldn’t see anything in the dust storm from the outside, it was easy to determine where the golem was. The effect of the spell was perfectly round. That meant the centre of the storm was where the golem was. If Tom wanted to kill it from the outside, he could target its location easily. When his friendly earth elemental was driving it, the cloud acted unpredictably, but the control orb had not been programmed to do the same.
He started throwing. He couldn’t aim, but the kobolds according to Everlyn had been packed together tightly, so it was likely that he would hit the targets. To his right Michael released an intense yellow bolt that entered the dust storm and then went off like a nuclear bomb. Despite the concealing spinning cyclone that acted to hide the combatants, he could see those struck by the chaos bolt. The skeletal imprints of glowing bones were visible to everyone. At least six had been hit.
Michael whooped in delight. From Tom’s side and not the area he had hit, a trio of kobolds burst from the dust cloud and charged the healer. Without hesitation, Michael threw his axe. It expanded as it flew and grew to four times its size. The monsters tried to escape it and they should have been agile enough to do so, but space seemed to constrict against them. The first was decapitated, and the second had its arm sliced off just below the shoulder. Miraculously, the third got past the weapon by twisting acrobatically despite the way the air itself tried to prevent it from doing so. It landed and then dashed forward its own cutlass raised high.
Then Clare was in its way. It bounced off her glowing shield and forgot all about Tom as it attacked her furiously. Rahmat’s spear slammed home. The monster that had lost an arm was impaled by multiple earth spikes. Toni’s air blades tore apart the one attacking Clare.
The dust storm died abruptly as the magic of the generator was turned off. Tom got the impression of a series of charred corpses on one side. Three others bludgeoned to death by his rocks, two more were victims of the golem, another two had died with arrows in them. His poor golem was acting dead as per the plan. He was pretty sure it was pretending as it did not look that damaged. Only five remained standing, and their eyes went between the targets and then focused on Michael.
En masse, they charged him.
They were rank eighteen and almost twice as fast as Tom was. He needed to react instantly, so he activated lunge not just for its movement speed benefits but to provide himself with time to think. He sprinted across to intercept the leading kobold. His spear collided with its skull with a bone shaking force.
The time spent running had let him gather his thoughts. He couldn’t afford to react immediately. He blinked to measure time. The kobold he had struck bounced backwards while Tom was pushed mostly toward Michael.
The other four were close enough, and he seized the timing and unleashed Lightning Enrage at its maximum range. Sparks of electricity arced out and burrowed into the monsters. Some under the finger nails others through their nostrils. Every exposed hole was exploited.
All of his focus went into surviving the next few seconds.
The kobolds deployed a variety of weapons. He let the swords scrape off stone. A spear go through his side, leaving no more than a flesh wound. He flipped and flopped with red sprays of blood exploding around him.
They were rank eighteen and all five the little shits used their skills to hurt him. His spear stabbed out with the Enlarge skill, allowing him to rip a gash in the leg of a creature who would have otherwise of escaped.
His warning senses went haywire, and he teleported away. Then turned his chest to his tier three physical stone. The club hit a glancing blow that still sent him flying backward. The kobolds, having objected to lightning wiggling into their eyes followed him. There was an indent in his right side ribs, the crumbled hole as large as one of Everlyn’s closed fists. He would deal with it later, as there was no time now. He kicked off the wall to meet the four coming to murder him. The one his initial strike had hit was dead. It looked like Thor had brained it as the skull was crushed. He weaved between the attacks. An earth spike caught one, another collapsed as a magical arrow slammed into it. That was sufficient to allow him to dodge all the incoming blows weaving between them.
Rahmat’s spear took out one of them and then Michael threw his axe again.
The battle was over. Tom sunk his hand into the wall and pulled out a handful of stone and slapped it on his chest. The wound healed.
“That was ugly.” He said, breathing heavily.
“The bastards burned all their skills in the first five seconds.” Everlyn told him.
“And fate,” Tom agreed. “We’re going to have to be careful about engaging large groups. Were there any runners?”
Everlyn shook her head.
“Great.”
“Leader Tom.”
He turned around and found the elder right beside him.
“The time has come for us to help the soul damaged ones.”
“Now?” Tom asked in confusion.
“Yes, Leader Tom. We are prepared. We must all combine our pathing, none may be spared from the endeavour. It will be long and complicated. I humbly request you refrain from zone conquest and quell your curiosity and give us privacy in the safe room.”
Tom mostly understood what it was saying. It was a plan to heal Clare and Keikain via a joint effort. It would prefer the other humans didn’t kill themselves in the meantime. He wasn’t sure that was feasible. “We’re sort of on a deadline. We need to get stronger.”
“Leader Tom. If you feel secure, to progress, without the cursed ones and our own presence. Then you’re welcome to renew your fights. I just beg that you don’t come near the entry cavern and disturb us. Our procedure is a once off and will conjure them time to flourish in this trial.”