The 3rd floor was a massive cavern with the roof stretching far above their heads, disappearing into the gloom where the glowstones did not reach. Since they'd only gone down one floor, seeing that tall ceiling was a little strange, but Eli didn’t give it too much thought. There were plenty of things that did not make sense with this place.
A long slope down was ahead of them, and to his surprise, it was paved. The surprise only grew when he saw a small city in the middle of the massive cavern, far below them in the distance. From what he could tell, the houses were built mostly with lumber and most were at least two stories. All in all, the town consisted of somewhere around seventy buildings, around streets lit by glowstones.
"What is the town doing here?" Agnes asked.
Everyone looked at Eli, who just shrugged. "Why would I know?"
"Hey, Alcott, what skills do you have?" Eli asked.
"Aura of Defense and Commandeer."
"Do you mind activating Aura of Defense?"
"Sure," Alcott said.
Eli waited a second, but saw no change. "Is it active?"
"It is."
"Thanks," Eli replied. What a bummer. Multiples of the same aura didn’t stack.
"What is that?" the Affliction Mage asked, pointing to a building on the outskirts of the town. A mass of movement showed through the darkness, and any glowstones in the area were obscured.
"I think that's my friend Cruella," Eli said. "She's trapped in one of the buildings, and there are lizardmen around her."
"There must be hundreds of them," Leonardo said, frowning.
"There are a lot," Eli agreed, before sending a message to Cruella.
Eli: Okay. We're down on the third floor now, and I can see a whole lot of lizardmen falling all over a building. I'm guessing you're inside?
Cruella: Yeah. It's getting a little claustrophobic in here, but yeah, that's me, I think. I'm just meditating to get my mana up, but I did not look forward to staging my own jailbreak.
Eli: Why is there a town here?
Cruella: How would I know? Maybe the lizards need a place to live? They just keep spawning forever, and their level is pretty high. This is a great grind spot. The Dragon was down here earlier, but I haven't seen him in a while.
Eli: Mr. Thomas?
Cruella: Yep. He's a beast. Maybe he went down to the 4th floor.
Eli: We’ll keep our eyes open. Just hang tight for a little while longer and we'll come rescue you.
Cruella: Please save me, my white knight in shining armor. I'm a damsel. In distress, and such.
Eli nodded toward the city. "Alright, we should get closer."
"What if they all turn around and attack us instead?" Leonardo asked nervously. "There's no way we can kill that many."
"Here's the plan," Eli began, pausing for effect. "I'm going to start attacking them with Sigil of Light. It's the area of effect heal I used earlier. Since I have the Harming Healer talent, I can also use it to kill stuff. Once I've finished a few off and you guys hopefully leveled up, you pick Sigil of Light too and start casting it on the ground. You did pick Harming Healer, right?"
The three mages nodded.
"Good. That gives us four Sigils of Light, which should be plenty. Don't forget to go into the Skill Tree and pick some appropriate nodes. There's one for increasing the area of effect."
"Skill tree?" Trent asked, looking confused.
Eli looked at the group. They all had looks of bewilderment on their faces. "Open up your Skills menu then think Skill Tree at one of the skills. You'll see what I mean."
A collective "Oooooh," ran through the group as they all followed Eli's instruction.
"Spread the word," Eli said, smiling. "So, everyone good with the plan so far?"
They nodded.
"Great. If they get close to us, we'll fall back and use the passage here." He pointed at a place where the cave floor rose up to create a natural choke point. "That should be enough. If we get screwed, I'll just warp us out of here."
"Sure," Leonardo said, glancing down at Luca.
With the long slope down, their viewing angle put them far above the city below, giving them incredible range with their spells. Eli only walked down the slope for a little while before stopping.
"This should do it," he said. "Ready?"
"Ready."
Eli cast Sigil of Light on top of the building. The light from the symbol on the roof rose up into the air, covering a whole lot of lizardmen, damaging a huge number of those trying to reach Cruella.
Ding! You have reached level 36.
The lizardmen provided some decent experience, even for Eli. The others, though, exploded in levels as the monsters died in droves. Soon, three additional Sigils of Light joined his own. They were much smaller and didn't do as much damage, but every little bit helped as lizardmen crawled into the circles, dying in droves.
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Cruella: I am hearing a lot of screams of pain and dying over here. You getting close?
Eli: Not close. We're killing them from afar.
Many more died before they got wise to what was happening, and a fifth Sigil of Light soon joined in. Eli looked over at Alcott.
Alcott. Human. Commander (10) / Healer (2).
"Good man," Eli murmured, slapping his shoulder in encouragement. He immediately felt strange about it, but the nod of appreciation from the older man eased some of the strangeness.
The lizardmen took a little while longer to understand what was going on and who was attacking them, but then a shout rose into the air, drifting through the spacious cave as they all turned to run up the slope.
The group placed Sigils of Light in their way, but the lizardmen were able to avoid them without too much trouble, only stepping inside and dying when they clumped up too much. Eli estimated about a hundred of them were still alive, charging toward them. The mages soon switched to other spells for better targeting.
Buffing everyone, Eli began heal-bombing, picking off a single lizardman with each spell cast.
"Do we retreat?" Leonardo asked, watching the approaching horde.
A wall of ice shot horizontally from the ground with spikes of ice pointing right at the approaching lizardmen. Some ran to the side of the wall, but many were pushed right into it, dying instantly from having their chests pierced. The chaos created a grouping of the monsters, allowing the party to once again place Sigils of Light on the ground. More than thirty lizardmen perished in moments.
"I think we're good," Eli said, continuing his attacks.
Ding! You've reached level 37.
It was the melee classes' time to shine. Trent let out a war cry that made him, Leonardo, and Luca grow a little taller and wider. Once buffed, the Barbarian swung his huge sword down at the nearest lizardman. It raised its puny sword, but Trent's blade just sheared right through it. The lizardman's head fell to the ground, right next to the remnants of its broken weapon.
Up close, they finally got a good look at what they'd been fighting. The lizardmen walked upright on two legs, their entire hide scaled and shiny, with bulky, powerful-looking arms and legs. They kept a solid balance thanks to a long lizard's-tail. Bone-looking spikes protruded all along their tails and up their spines, reminding Eli of some pre-historic dinosaurs. Their faces were a grotesque cross of human and lizard, with long jaws like a crocodile and the tiny nose holes of a lizard, but horribly human eyes devoid of any thought or emotion. These things were animals that someone or something melded into a cursed amalgamation of man and beast.
Thankfully, the close look did not give the melee fighters pause.
Luca entered stealth in one place, and one lizardman died several steps away before a second collapsed as well, some distance away.
Leonardo seemed to possess some new sense of steadfastness as he approached a group of three lizardmen. First, a fluid thrust left a puncture wound in one lizardman's chest. Blood gushed, and it fell dead without a sound. The Knight blocked a blow on his shield without flinching and turned away a second blow on his sword before cutting into the neck of the second monster. Leonardo then turned to the final lizardman, parrying another blow from a crude mace, then intercepting another desperate strike, before almost nonchalantly letting his sword continue forward and down to cut something in the lizardman's arm, making it fall limp to the monster's side. The next strike from Leonardo took its head off cleanly.
Trent, Luca, and Leonardo made short work of the rest of the monsters, while Agnes, Widelene, and Yvonne got to try out their new healing spells. All in all, the fight was over quickly and with minimal injury.
"You've grown stronger," Eli said approvingly, "and not only by level, but by combat experience as well, I think."
"Something is wrong here."
Eli looked over at Agnes. "What?"
"Priest of The Dying Light isn't available as a specialization," Agnes replied.
"You can't specialize your healer class?" Eli asked.
"No, I can," she muttered. "But it's just 'Priest', 'Scholar', and 'Crusader'."
"No Dying Light?"
She shook her head. "No."
Eli had an inkling as to why. Light must've been the culprit. He did not see the reason for limiting those specializations, or what difference it made, but perhaps she was satisfied with Eli, Samantha, and Simon.
"It probably makes no difference."
Light shone across Agnes and Eli inspected her.
Agnes. Human. Mage (Cold Mage) (10) / Priest (10).
Her hesitant smile widened. "It's here. I can pick Warp."
A streak of red lightning shone down in the city below, moving at top speed in their direction.
"Get ready," Eli said. "Maybe it's a boss."
They moved into formation with melee up front, the mage-healers at the back, but they needn't have bothered. The crackling lightning came to a sudden stop right in front of them, then vanished. In its place, Cruella appeared. She held a slim longsword in one hand and a broad dagger in the other, both of them shining with that same white and light tinged with red at the edges.
"Thanks for the rescue, everyone," Cruella said. "Looks like you've leveled quite a bit."
"Same goes for you," Eli said.
Cruella. Human. Artificer (10) / Duelist (10) / Scout (10).
"You're really embracing the multi-classing thing, I see," Eli said. "Scout is a specialization of Rogue?"
"Yup. And Duelist is one of the Fighter specializations."
She looked out across Eli's party. "Want me to add runes to your weapons as a token of my overwhelming gratitude?"
"Rune?" Trent asked, sounding a little skeptical.
"It makes them stronger. Permanently."
Trent held out his two-handed sword, and Cruella grabbed it in one hand and, surprisingly enough, held it steady. The massive weight should have been impossible for her to lift, but her small hand and arm didn't even tremble. She closed her eyes, and a moment later, a rune appeared at the base of the sword, just above the hilt. It looked almost seared into the blade with its red color. Eli inspected the weapon as she handed it back to Trent.
Runeforged Two-handed sword (Common): +20% physical damage. +10% Strength.
"Whoa," Trent said. "This just got a lot better. I can feel the power thrumming in the metal."
Leonardo handed over his sword hilt-first, and Cruella repeated the procedure.
Runeforged Longsword (Common): +15% percent defense. +10% Constitution.
"And for you, little rogue," Cruella said, accepting Luca’s knife. A moment later, a runic symbol emerged, covering most of the blade.
Runeforged Dagger (Common): First attack out of stealth deals +100% damage.
Luca’s eyes went wide. "Nice!" he said eagerly, expressing his thanks.
Cruella looked to the rest of the group. "Do you guys have any staves or something?" She glanced over at Alcott. "I don't even know what Commanders use."
Agnes, Yvonne, and Widelene all shook their heads.
Eli fished three wooden staves out of his inventory, then checked his Character Sheet and shook his head. "Commanders use batons or flag-standards. Haven't found any of those yet."
Cruella accepted the staves one by one.
Runeforged Wooden Staff (Common): +20% mana regeneration. +10% spell damage.
"Are you doing that with your Artificer skills?" Eli asked.
Cruella shook her head. "No. This is the Runeforging profession. Remember we got that book from Ephraim?"
"How does it work?"
"Well, you scrap a bunch of items to get materials. Then you use that to craft runes. There's nothing to it, really, except you have to discover the different runes, which is a pain."
"So you can both enchant things as an Artificer and add more effects with Runeforging?"
She grinned. "That's right. How do you think I'm already level 30? My weapons get crazy good."
"You’ve done a lot in this short time," Eli said.
"You're almost level 40."
Eli laughed. "That's fair."
A message from Amy arrived.
Amy: Sasha is gone! I think Solomon took her! Please, I need help!