Chapter 11

“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Amber asked while disarming a trap that would have launched arrows from a nearby wall.

“I’m capable of conversations, but I prefer the company of my cat, Jenkins.” Maud replied.

“People do kinda suck…” Drew said, nodding his head. He was keeping an eye out for any danger while his wife disarmed the most recent trap.

“It’s not that I dislike people, but I didn’t come here for socialization.” Maud replied in an even tone.

Three days into their dungeon delve, and the undead woman hadn’t opened up. Drew was of the opinion that they just hadn’t stumbled onto a topic that interested the frontline female fighter, but he also understood his wife’s frustration over the newest party member. They were going to be stuck in the dungeon for a long time together, and currently, trying to talk with Maud was a lot like talking to a rock.

Still, the woman was a competent fighter. She joined Drew in protecting the rest of the party, and taking on a role similar to a tank in rpg games. She fought with a large, oversized axe, and supplemented her physical prowess with magical might. In a lot of ways, she was similar to Drew in combat. Her magical powers revolved around souls. Although, he’d also seen her use an ice-based skill that froze the environment around her as well.

The dungeon had turned out to be pretty close to what the party was expecting going into it. It had all the typical dungeon-fair thus far, traps, monsters, minor puzzles. There had been no major surprises on that front. The unexpected part was the sheer scale of everything. Apparently, the dungeon was so large, that the floors numbered into the thousands, which boggled Drew’s mind when he thought about it.

So far, the group had made it to floor number four. Maud had mentioned that they were making fairly decent progress despite the party’s lack of experience in delving. Maud was the veteran in this regard, she’d been to this particular dungeon a couple of times, but outside of that, Drew and company knew very little about their newest member.

Each floor consisted of different challenges, some were mostly monster-based, others were a mix of traps, puzzles, or monsters. The floors they were currently finishing up had enemies at peak F Grade while bosses were low E Grade. Basically, it was the perfect difficulty for the group to learn how to fight with each other and get used to everyone’s abilities. In gamer terms, it was the newbie area.

Traps were easily spotted, monsters were on the dumb side, and the loot they received was garbage. But, that wasn’t the point of this area. The point was to give the party time to become acclimated with each other and the dungeon itself, without it being too unforgiving. The challenge of the dungeon would increase as they continued conquering floors.

Personally, Drew was thankful for the newbie area. Fighting with Amber by his side felt like second nature, and he felt safe with her there. He’d spent a fair amount of time on Earth fighting with her, so he knew what she was capable of, same with Freya. Spock and Maud were different stories though.

Spock had recently changed his combat role in a fairly significant way. Previously, Spock had been a medium warrior, a well rounded physical fighter, but now he was an Arcanist. In Drew’s mind the Arcanist class was all about support. Spock’s abilities centered around crowd control, debuffs, and damage done via his bonded familiar. But, and this was the important part, Spock was still learning his new class, and the team was adjusting tactics to fit him into the flow of combat.

With Maud, it was easy to bring her into the group’s combat dynamic, as it required very little changes during combat. The issue the group seemed to be having with her was trust. It was difficult to trust someone that you didn’t connect with, especially during life and death situations.

On the bright side, it was still early in the dungeon run, and they had time to work out all the kinks.

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Drew and Maude advanced cautiously forward, keeping their eyes open for traps and ambushes. Freya was off to Drew’s side, as her superior hearing and sense of smell occasionally gave them a heads up before anything bad happened. Spock and Amber followed up from behind, with Spock being closer to the middle of the formation, and Amber taking the backline to keep an eye out for patrols and ambushes at their six.

Floor six was sucking big time. The entire layout was in a damp and cramped cave setting. The humidity was causing what little vegetation to exude a rotted smell that messed with Freya’s sense of smell, and threw off that portion of the team’s early warning system. The cave had a low ceiling height, and the walls caused an almost claustrophobic environment, which was a huge detriment to the party’s combat abilities.

Small spaces made wielding Drew’s greatsword, and Maud’s oversized axe nearly impossible. Worse yet, they hadn’t thought to bring any backup weapons, so the giant weapons were being used as improvised shields while the two frontliners attempted to dodge attacks while relying on their spells for damage output. Maud had mentioned that the party would begin seeing loot that would fix these issues in the near future, but for now they had to make due with what they had.

The whole situation had caused a massive buildup of tension as they progressed through the cave-like floor. Floor six was a Goblin den, which made everything fucking miserable for everyone involved. Everyone except the Goblins that is. The monster’s short bodies, and ability to fit into tight spaces gave them a massive advantage that the group was finding extremely irritating.

“Grrrrrr.” Freya let out a low growl.

The party halted at Freya’s warning, Drew and Maud held their weapons to the front as makeshift barriers while they prepared spells for any ambushes. Amber nocked an arrow, and Spock held his magical focus in his hand.

“She says there’s Goblins up ahead.” Amber whispered after listening to Freya.

“I don’t see anything.” Drew said, searching the nearby rock walls.

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“Either a false wall, or a hidey-hole.” Maud replied in a low voice.

“Hidey-hole, what’s that?” Drew asked.

“A small space that intersects our tunnel’s pathway that we can’t see from here. It likely feeds into this tunnel, and they’ll hit us from behind.” Maud replied in a hushed tone.

“Alright, how do we counter it then?” Amber asked.

“We’ll rearrange our formation. I’ll cover the back, your husband takes the front. You two remain as is. They will swarm us from behind, be prepared.” Maud said, heading to the back of the group, squeezing past Amber and Spock.

Drew led the group forward, keeping his eyes peeled for any indications of a new tunnel. He led the group forward like this, moving slowly for several minutes.

“REEEEEEEEE!” Several shrieks pierced the silence.

Seeing nothing in front of him, Drew turned and found the backline being swarmed with tiny green midgets. Fucking Goblins. The quarters were too tight, and he couldn’t send out a [Death Toll]. The Screaming skull was too big and would hit his teammates. Instead, he sent out several casts of [Corrupting Contagion], and [Agony].

The Goblin’s screams of excitement turned into screams of pain as Drew’s [Agony] began to take effect. The spell was less damaging than his corruption spell, but it caused immense physical pain in the targets, which broke the concentration of weaker-willed creatures and caused them to attempt to flee. Spock lifted his magical orb and sent out twisting rays of purple light into the wildly charging Goblin ranks.

Several Goblins fell to the ground clutching their stomachs as they came under the effects of Spock’s spell. The fallen goblin’s screeching laughter and the pain it caused their stomachs took them out of the fight temporarily. A translucent, ghost-like chicken sat on Spock’s shoulder, it turned towards Drew and bent over.

An egg the size of a basketball flew out of the chicken familiar’s ass and into the group of Goblins.

“Eyes!” Spock shouted loudly.

Drew shut his eyes, knowing what was coming. Light exploded from behind Drew’s eyelids, and he kept them shut as hard as possible.

“SCREEEEE!” Goblins screamed.

“Good!” Spock yelled over the panicking voices of the greenskins.

Drew reopened his eyes. The monsters were running into each other, flailing their makeshift weapons into their neighbors in an attempt to defend themselves. Some ran into walls, or over their fallen comrades that were still stuck laughing. Spock’s familiar had launched an [Egg of Blindness], a crowd control ability that blinded everyone nearby that didn’t close their eyes in time.

The rampaging swarm of Goblins were blinded, incapacitated, rotting, or writhing in pain. Or all of the above. No longer an immediate and looming threat, they had been brought low by Spock’s control spells, and Drew’s more nefarious abilities. Freya bolted forward and began to rip the throats out of nearby greenskins as Amber snipped them off from afar with arrows in their throats, heads, and chests. The rest was just cleanup duty.

“I didn’t even see them, and I was watching the walls we passed by closely.” Drew said, thrusting his sword down to pierce a laughing Goblin’s chest.

“That’s why they’re called hidey-holes, not findy-holes.” Maud replied, smashing the top of her axe into an unfortunate Goblin’s head.

“Yes, thank you Maud. Clearly I thought it was the later rather than the former. Can you show me where this hole is please?” Drew asked, his voice having a sarcastic tone to it.

“Certainly.” The undead woman said as if all was right in the world.

The lich, as that’s what the group had learned Maude was, led them to a small intersecting tunnel. A lich was a lot like a Soulflame, except rather than being raised by a caster and having some sort of internal programming that enforced loyalty, liches usually attached their souls to an object called a phylactery. If the lich was ever killed, their body would naturally reform after a set period of time near their phylactery, as long as it wasn’t destroyed.

Soulflames had their souls directly attached to their body, or a body. When that body was completely destroyed, the soul would move on. Liches had an advantage in that regard. But like anything, there were pros and cons to each option. Liches lost a lot of their power when their body died, and they’d need to absorb souls as nourishment until their body was back to peak condition. Additionally, the muted emotions that Soulflames dealt with sucked, but liches actually lacked most emotions altogether. Happy and sad just weren’t things they felt.

The Soulflames that Drew raised also had one other advantage, they leveled at a normal rate. Liches advanced much slower due to the soul being in another container. Each option had their uses, but after spending nearly ten days with Maud, Drew could definitely see the lack of emotions compared to the Soulflames back at Sanctuary.

“Those sneaky little shits.” Amber muttered after seeing the hidey-hole.

“There is a chest near the back wall.” Spock said, walking forward.

“Hold.” Maud said, her arm held out to prevent Spock from advancing. The man turned to eye her in curiosity.

“Watch.” Maud said. The lich leaned down and picked up a small rock, before tossing it into the room near the chest. The chest opened, and a giant set of teeth protruded from the opening as a long tongue swooped forward to quickly latch on the rock and bring it into the chest’s maw.

“Mimic. Never trust things that seem out of place. Better advice, never trust anything in a dungeon.” Maud added. She stretched out her arm, and a bright blue light flashed forward from her hand, then disappeared. Ice crystallized on the mimic, and it began to struggle to escape, but its struggles were for naught as the ice soon covered its entire body.

Maud walked forward and swung her axe down upon the frozen mimic, splitting it in half. The lich was powerful, but nowhere near as powerful as The Lady, and her ice spell only worked on the outside of the monster, its internals were still a steaming pile of entrails as both halves split open. The group approached the dead monster, and Maud was scrounging through the gorey mess as if she was harvesting flowers in a garden.

The woman picked out a half-digested skeleton. Its skin and most of its meat was gone, but some ligaments remained to hold the bones together in the shape of a humanoid of some kind. She tossed it to the side as if it was trash. In the skeletons hands, and still gripped tightly were two long hatchets.

“Perfect.” The lich said, pulling out a string of orange beads.

“What is that Ms. Maud?” Spock asked.

“Mimics are like clams, and these are the pearls.” The undead woman said, lifting up the beads to show Spock.

“Are these pearls powerful, or practically useful?” Spock asked, clearly curious and eager for new knowledge.

“Oh my, yes. They look beautiful when sewn into a spring skirt. The amber color contrasts well with a deep forest green fabric that I’ve been saving for a rainy day.” The woman said, excited with her new acquisition.

“...and what is their power when sewn into this skirt?” Spock asked, his head tilted in confusion.

“Why, to look fabulous of course! These mimic pearls don’t just grow on trees.” The woman said, quickly stashing the beads into her spatial inventory.

Drew and Amber looked at each other, eyebrows raised. It looked like the lich was passionate about something after all.

“I see.” Spock said, quickly looking to Drew to see if this was normal behavior. Drew shook his head ‘no’.

Drew pried the two axes from the skeleton’s hands, taking one for himself for use in the tight cave tunnels, and handing the other to Maud. The undead woman took a look at the hatchet.

“It’s not pretty, but it will do.” She shrugged, accepting the hatchet from Drew.

“Maud, do you like making skirts and other stuff?” Drew asked.

“That’s a dumb question. Of course I do, everything I’m wearing I made myself, except the armor.” The lich said, gesturing to show off her outfit.

Finally! We have an ‘in’! Drew thought to himself.

“It’s so pretty! I was wondering where you got it from, but you made it yourself! You’re so talented!” Amber exclaimed. His wife was clearly jumping on the opening Drew had made. Or… at least he hoped so.

“I know right? I made it just for this dungeon, the little fairy skulls in my skirt are my favorite. Damn buggers were terrible to catch, but the finished product speaks for itself. Forty days in a Fae realm was a small price to pay for these beauties.” Maud gestured at the morbid skulls the size of acorns, embedded within her clothing.

Spock had no idea what was going on, or why everyone seemed so interested in the clothing. Drew sat back and watched his wife crack open the undead woman’s shell and drag her out into socialization, and Freya… Freya was licking her ass. She’s as smart as a human now, and still does that… Why did Amber drop her on her head as a puppy? Now we’re stuck with a special needs animal… Drew sighed internally, and looked back to the two girls.

Our party member is a hermit spinster, crazy cat lady lich… worst book title… ever.