Perhaps some of those left behind thought it unfair of Eli to pick a team with members who were already somewhat proficient. Eli thought these people had proven themselves, given their levels, and he needed people who could level up quickly, so that they, in turn, could help others as well.
He messaged Samantha.
Eli: Once you get to the dungeon, why don't you and Simon grab some lower-level people and help them level up?
Samantha: Sure, I guess.
Eli: Remember. Simon hasn’t fought much, so make sure you keep an eye on him.
Samantha: He'll do fine. Military, remember?
"Yeah, sure," Eli murmured. Being in the military wasn't the same thing as being here, but he supposed there was some overlap in dealing with fear of combat, at least.
Continuing down the hallway with the martial classes up front, they soon bumped into more lizardlings. Eli quickly realized the party members had no sense of coordination whatsoever. They got in each other's way a lot, despite the corridor being wide enough for everyone to fit abreast. Standing behind the melee classes, the mages couldn't help much without hurting those in front, except for the Conjurer, Hikari. He created some sort of pet slime that absorbed one of the lizardlings. From the look of it thrashing inside the translucent slime, it did not die a pleasant death. Hikari observed the lizardling's death with great interest, and he muttered something about reactive agents.
Thankfully, it wasn't all corridors. Rooms opened up to the sides. Some were fully empty while others were made up to look like fancy sitting rooms or libraries, except the books and shelves were blank, and the windows just looked out onto more stone. Eli didn't understand it, but then again, he didn't have to. They were here to level up. That was enough.
All rooms, empty or otherwise, were filled with lizardlings of an increasingly high level. Soon, they carried bows, and a few mages appeared as well, spread out into the groups. It was easier for the group to keep some space between them in the rooms, with the mages in the back using spells to get the job done. The Affliction Mage, Yvonne, couldn't do much in the way of quick damage since her spells took some time to stack up with bleeding, poison, and curses, and the lizardlings died a little too quickly for them to get going. At least her curses made them weak to other types of damage, allowing the Fighter, Rogue, and Barbarian to more easily hack them to pieces.
In the corridor, the mages only followed, content with having Leonardo the Fighter, Luca the Rogue, and Trent the Barbarian do the bulk of the killing, while Eli kept everyone's health topped up. With Aura of Defense, the strikes from the lizardlings barely did any damage, anyway. With the Agility buff, the party moved more quickly and killed faster. Embrace the Dying Light, which added light damage to weapons, made the wounds on the lizardlings glow white. The effect made them squeal in pain no matter how small the injury, if they did not instantly die.
A few times, they were ambushed by groups of lizardlings coming up from behind them. Thankfully, they were smart enough to stay away from Eli's Sigil of Light, meaning they stood around waiting for their turn to get killed once the group of enemies up front was dealt with, and the Sigil of Light spell expired.
Levels were steadily gained by everyone except Eli, who barely got any experience points at all from these low-level monsters. The place was almost maze-like in layout, forcing them to backtrack several times when they came upon blank stone walls barring their way. Eli grew increasingly frustrated with the long stretches of corridor without anything to kill. It was everything but effective leveling.
Eli: Cruella, is there some trick to the second level? We're not getting anywhere.
Cruella: Hell if I know. I just kept walking and killing until I found some stairs. Hug the right wall. Isn't that what they say to do if you find yourself in a labyrinth? Follow the wall.
Eli: Thanks, I'll try that.
Cruella: Found any lizardling mages yet?
Eli: A few. They haven't been a problem.
Cruella: Good. Then you're going the right way, probably. If you find any traps, that means you're almost there. The next level is more fun.
He didn't know what she meant by fun, but as he walked and messaged Cruella, the group did find their first trap. Trent bellowed in pain as wooden spikes shot up from holes in the floor, straight into his feet and legs, piercing him in multiple places, drawing blood, and forcing him into place.
Eli immediately healed the damage, but the Barbarian's health kept dropping since the spikes were already embedded into his body and showed no signs of retracting back into the floor. The screaming continued. Eli's heals did nothing against the pain, after all.
"You have to pull him off!" Eli shouted.
"What if we get spiked?" Luca asked, his voice shrill and panicked.
Trent's health was dropping quicker and quicker, and he looked pale. Eli healed him again, then placed a Sigil of Light on the ground to mitigate the bleeding damage. Not sure what else to do, he stepped forward himself, hoping that his Aegis would protect him. No second trap appeared as Eli got down next to Trent. He breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned forward, grabbed the barbarian's left leg, and pulled upward, trying to use his legs to lift rather than his back, remembering the harsh admonishment from his old gym teacher back in high school when Eli messed up some exercise. The foot and leg came free of the wooden spikes, but it was a mess of flapping flesh and gorged muscle.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The Barbarian fell unconscious. This left one leg full of spikes still stuck while his body slumped to the floor, pulling on them with enough force to break the wood. Others gathered around in an instant, pulling the thick stakes out of the Barbarian's other leg while Eli's healing closed the wounds. Trent remained unconscious.
Sprays of blood covered the floor and wall, with a large puddle around the fallen Barbarian. Luca's foot slipped from under him and tumbled into the mess, staining his clothes red. Leonardo offered him a hand and managed to get Luca back up on his feet. The resemblance between them made Eli suspect they might be father and son.
"What do we do?" Agnes, the Cold Mage, asked. "We can't just leave him here."
"Let me try something," the Widelene, Lightning Mage said in a heavily accented Creole-English, rolling up her sleeves to show a surprising amount of muscle. She stepped up and leaned over to put her hands on the Barbarian's chest. Then she closed her eyes as if concentrating, readying herself to cast a spell. Rather than cast a spell, she drew back her hand and slapped Trent across his face so hard the sound rang out in the stone corridor.
The Lightning Mage stood, waving her hand in pain, jumping around and blowing on it. "Stupid hard face," she muttered.
The Barbarian came to. "What happened?"
Then he looked down at his legs and let out a quick shriek that ended as abruptly as it'd come when he saw the spikes were gone from his flesh.
"Can you stand?" Eli asked.
"I think so," Trent said. His knees were weak, and his legs shook, but he did stand in the end.
Backtracking a little to find one of the blank books, they removed a page, writing out a warning to be extra careful in case the traps reset. Writing in Trent's blood was macabre, but they didn't have much choice.
It took the Barbarian a while to walk steadily again, and Eli took the front to make sure there weren't any more traps.
More traps did appear. Aegis of The Dying Light protected Eli from a multitude of arrows, poisoned darts, and even more spikes. Once the group knew what they were looking for, the triggers were easy enough to spot. Faint marks on the stones on the floor made the traps activate when someone stepped on them, and the more advanced sort reacted when someone walked past a mark on the wall.
The enemies changed a little after that, becoming higher level, bigger and stronger. They were still called lizardlings, but they now reached up to about Eli's shoulder and fought with cohesion, helping each other and even retreating when things didn’t go their way. When that happened, rather than chasing after the lizardlings, the party's mages finished them off as the enemies fled.
“More of them are using spells and skills now,” Eli said, noting the difference.
The melee fighters found it difficult to deal with at first. Rather than just hacking away, they needed to up their game as well, stepping out of harm's or actually batting the enemy weapons or shields aside to get a good blow in. It was nothing the party couldn't handle, though. Not with Eli helping them along.
His buffs helped a lot with the increased danger, especially Agility, which he refreshed on each of them every time they fought a new group of monsters. That extra speed and reaction time allowed them to dodge and strike far faster than they would have been able to without it, and the lizardlings never really found an answer to it.
They made it to a room that looked an awful lot like a church, with benches on both sides, placed in rows all the way to the front of the room where a sort of altar had been erected. There was no cross, of course, or Symbol of The Dying Light, but there was something—a painting depicting a lizardling, one which stood tall like a man. It towered over humans with its hands up in the air as if celebrating. When Eli looked closer, he saw that the humans in the painting were down on their knees, either praying to the huge lizard man or begging for mercy. Looking at that painting, Eli got a new quest:
Banish the Lizard God Rizari and free humanity from his terror.
In the gloom, Eli didn’t notice the five lizardlings kneeling in front of the depiction at first. The Barbarian let out a shout that increased his speed further and then rushed in, cleaving the four lizardlings in one huge swipe of his two-handed sword. They died immediately, and Eli almost felt kind of bad for them—they hadn’t even fought back.
Eli: Cruella. Did you get a quest down here?
Cruella: Nope. Anything interesting?
Eli: It wants me to banish Rizari.
Cruella: Isn't that the name of this temple?
Eli: Yeah. It's the lizards' god.
Cruella: Heh, like in JRPGS.
Eli: Huh?
Cruella: The first quest is always like fetch ten feathers, and in the end you always kill a god.
Eli: We're just getting started.
Cruella: True.
"Did you guys get a quest?" Eli asked the party. Everyone nodded. Several members of the group looked pale.
Eli gave each of them a look, then nodded. "Let's be careful."
The next room had heavy gilded frames with actual paintings, expertly crafted to show the huge walking lizard taking over a city by razing its walls. Another painting showed it sitting in a hilariously undersized throne, ruling over its new subjects.
“I don’t like this,” the Affliction Mage, Yvonne said after they had cleared a room of three warrior lizardlings. This had taken quite a while, with Eli having to heal repeatedly and block one from approaching the mages.
“They’re getting stronger,” Leonardo panted, his face red with exhaustion. “These were level 12.”
“You’ve grown stronger as well,” Eli reassured him. “I doubt you would have been able to deal with them before.”
They looted the warrior lizardlings clean, then left the room.
Cruella to Eli: By the way, there’s a boss at the end of the second floor. Don’t worry though, it’s easy. Just kill it quickly.
“There’s a boss somewhere nearby,” Eli said to the group. “Keep your wits about you."
The mention of a boss made the three martial classes slow down considerably, clearly not wanting to get too far ahead of the rest of the group. Agnes cast a spell, enveloping everyone in what looked like a thin sheet of ice which soon disappeared, leaving a defense buff. The group continued through the rooms, killing the higher-level lizardlings until a wooden gate appeared. None of the other rooms so far used doors. Openings just appeared in the stone walls. Here, though, it looked like they’d taken great care in creating something to keep people out.
“Looks heavy,” Yvonne said.
The Rogue walked up to it with perhaps a little too much confidence and reached out for a metal ring set into the wood. The second he touched it, a pop-up appeared.
Proceed into the High Priest's chamber? Yes/No.
Luca looked back at Eli, who nodded. “Let’s go kill the boss,” Eli said. “That should hopefully put you over to level 10. Be careful, everyone.”