Lightxis SHOUTOUT!!!
They checked a few more buildings but found the same as before. Nothing.
Heading farther away from the center of town and farther still from the entrance of the level, they met with more interesting opposition. Cruella entered a house by herself, and a shout was heard before she came flying back out, crashing across the street and hitting the wall with a loud crack. Everyone turned to her as Eli hurried over and healed her back to full health. Cruella stood but looked wobbly on her legs, as something huge made its way out of the building, wrecking the front as it emerged.
A large lizardman, twice as tall as any of them, appeared. Its eyes were just as empty as those of the other lizardmen, but its scales were darker, with bright highlights.
Lizardman Goliath. Level 32.
"Careful. It hits like a truck!" Cruella warned.
Before the Goliath had fully oriented itself on the street, Cruella was upon it again. Her blades blazed with fire as she plunged them into the enemy’s leg. The creature opened its mouth to let out a sound—a croaking hiss, rather than a roar.
The huge thing swiped at Cruella, but Simon had positioned himself well. Its hand struck Simon's shield, and even with Aegis activated, he was pushed back, and he and Cruella fell in a pile. Eli quickly cast Light's Seal, holding the Goliath in place for a brief moment. The hold shattered, and Eli tumbled back in surprise. He hadn’t known that could happen. Instead, he cast Agility and Bless on his party members, along with Embrace the Dying Light to help with the attacks, while a few summoned birds flew straight at the Goliath’s face, forcing it to divert its attention to swatting them.
Samantha’s beam of light chipped away at its health, burning into its midsection. The Goliath snapped its jaws, forcing the birds to retreat but giving Simon and Cruella enough time to regroup. The two began hacking relentlessly at the monster’s legs. The Goliath retaliated swiftly and powerfully, but Cruella ducked between its legs, and Simon stood his ground, slicing into the flesh and muscle of the Goliath and taking most blows on his shield. After the first surprise, he stayed upright with the shield in place, his health never dropping below the half point, thanks to Eli’s healing.
Finally, the Goliath fell with a heavy thud.
Ding! You have reached level 39.
“Barely anything more than a normal lizardman,” Cruella muttered after looting the huge monster. She glanced up at Eli, then her eyes widened, and she pointed. “Eli!”
Eli felt the thud before he had a chance to react and stumbled forward, falling to the ground. His head swam with pain, and his vision blurred. When he touched the back of his head, he winced from the pain, and his hand came away bloody. The area around the wound felt soft and squishy. Thankfully, Samantha was quick to heal him, knitting his skull back together with a very unpleasant, crunching sensation. Thinking how much it would've hurt if he didn't have the new pain numbing enchantments made him queezy.
Turning around on the ground, he found a lizardman emerging from a side street just behind him. He realized he’d forgotten to recast his Aegis in the chaos. Casting it now, he was glad it was off cooldown.
Lizardmen were streaming in from all directions. The group fought fiercely to hold them back, but they were on a main street with wide access from two directions and multiple side streets, allowing the monsters to swarm them.
“Why are they all coming here now?” Simon grunted, slamming a lizardman with his shield before thrusting his sword into another’s neck. He spun around, protecting Sasha from a blow.
Princess and Amy’s three wolves threw themselves at the enemy while Amy played a quick, jarring tune on her violin, stepping back from the continuous assault from the monsters. Cruella’s blades extended with ice, and when she slashed into the crowd of monsters, everything she touched froze. Eli blinked, thinking he saw gentle snow falling around her as she fought, a tight smile on her lips.
“Maybe everyone else left,” Sasha muttered, firing arrows into the throng.
Samantha nodded, glancing back up the slope. Eli looked too, and it did indeed look very quiet up there.
Twinkling lights spread from around Samantha, and they immediately found targets in the crowd. Eli buffed his Ravenous Barbarians, healed them when necessary, and cast spells to give their weapons an extra sting. A shining flash of light across the various party members signaled level ups. It went off over and over again as the lizardmen fell around them, piling up the corpses.
Aura of Defense mitigated some damage at least, allowing the group to last much longer while saving Eli’s mana. Still feeling woozy, Eli pointed away from the slope toward the back wall of the cavern. “We should head down to the fourth level,” he suggested. “Get away from these monster surges.”
Simon was flailing wildly with his sword now, more and more blows from the massing lizardmen landing on his extended sword arm and even his head. His helmet provided protection, but Eli knew getting hit repeatedly wouldn’t lead to anything good.
“I don’t know how we’re supposed to move like this,” Simon gasped, catching his breath between swings.
Amy switched her song to one that caused several lizardmen to turn on each other, and Sasha’s skill brought another group of them to their side, fighting for the party. Yet still, the enemies kept coming.
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Cruella switched her enchantments to fire, unleashing more area attacks, killing with more efficiency at the cost of heavy mana use.
“Guys, I’m almost out of mana,” Eli warned. “How did you fight here alone, Cruella?”
“Just killed a few and kept moving,” Cruella shouted over her shoulder. “Didn’t stand around on the main street, drawing in the entire level. Also, if you remember, it ended with me in a cell!”
Samantha climbed a pile of corpses and cast her light spells, burning the monsters before her. “Incoming!” she shouted, and the group prepared for another Goliath or similarly deadly foe.
Instead, flames erupted from farther down the street, engulfing the lizardmen and burning them to death almost instantly. The flash of heat made Eli raise his arms to shield his face, feeling the moisture being pulled from his skin and the breath in his lungs being forcibly pulled out of him. Everyone was coughing when the fire died, but every single lizardman on the street lay dead or was blocked behind walls of fire burning merrily between buildings, blocking most of the area where they were standing.
Ding! You have reached level 40.
A weary-looking dragon walked up the street with a slight limp, his robe torn and blood visible beneath it.
“Hello, Elijah,” he said.
“Mr. Thomas?” Eli asked, seeing the red, funny-looking wizard hat. "You've grown stronger."
Guy Thomas. Human. Level 34 Pyromancer.
"As have you, Elijah,” he said, breathing a little easier after Eli healed him.
“You killed all those lizardmen in an instant.”
Mr. Thomas was breathing hard, as exhausted as the group. “I spent all my remaining mana, but it looked like you could use some assistance.”
“Maybe I should have multi-classed into fire mage,” Samantha pondered, half-joking.
Mr. Thomas gave her a thin smile, one Eli recognized as his former boss being pleased. “The destructive force of fire spells is quite efficient for handling large groups,” he explained. “Unfortunately, I find it somewhat lacking against single powerful foes, such as bosses. Of which there are plenty on the fourth floor.”
“You’ve been down there alone?” Eli asked, concerned.
“Initially, there were five of us. Good people, but they didn’t make it. Once we ran out of health potions… Things took a turn for the worse. I just made it back to this level and I'll return to my office now to regroup and remember those I lost.”
"Would you like me to help you get back?" Eli asked. "I can return you to the office building with—"
"No, thank you, Elijah," Mr. Thomas replied, cutting him off. "I enjoy walking. It gives me time for consideration."
Amy stepped up beside Eli, all her animals except the owl back in her stables. "What is the fourth floor like, Mr. Thomas?"
"There are fewer enemies, but they’re more powerful," Mr. Thomas explained. "Like I said, quite a few bosses."
"What about the layout?" Cruella asked.
"Not just one building, but many," Mr. Thomas said. "They are connected with underground corridors, but you can go out into the cavern, which looks like a small town. Like, but smaller in scale."
"Like the priest on the second floor?" Eli asked, remembering the boss there.
"Yes," Mr. Thomas said gravely. "The fourth floor has more powerful monsters. Once or twice, I heard cries and shouts that sounded a little too human, but no matter how long we searched, we did not find the origin of those sounds. One by one, we were picked off. Be careful, Elijah."
"Thank you for the information," Eli said gratefully.
Mr. Thomas squeezed Eli's shoulder. "It’s the least I can do, Elijah. The firewalls will stay up for another minute or so, then you’re on your own." He walked off toward the slope, the firewall parting to let him through. Once he disappeared on the other side, Eli nodded off into the distance in the other direction.
"We should hurry if we want to go down."
Amy shook her head. "My animals are getting worn down. They can’t keep going for extended periods like we can, so I’m going to withdraw for now."
Sasha stepped up next to Amy as the Wall of Fire began dying down. "I'm going back with Amy."
Eli nodded. "Let's go down the stairs first, and I’ll warp you back outside the dungeon."
"Sounds good," Amy said, and with that, they were off.
The stairs themselves were built into the far wall of the cavern, and their footsteps echoed against the bare stone as they descended to the fourth floor. They walked out into a huge building that indeed looked very much like a church. There were many benches of treated old wood facing forward and an altar at the far end. It looked much like the chamber where they fought Ephraim, except this place wasn’t as bare.
Proper paintings hung on the walls, depicting scenes Eli recognized: the same imagery they’d seen above, with lizards conquering humans and performing strange rituals. Candles burned in candelabras along the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and even on the pillars scattered throughout the large chamber. A heavy silence hung over the church, but no lizardman appeared, giving the group a moment to breathe.
Eli marked their current spot, overwriting a previous one from the third floor. Sasha and Amy said their goodbyes, and Eli warped them out. Arriving back to the fourth floor, he turned to Samantha, Simon, and Cruella, and asked, "What do you think? Can we continue by ourselves?"
"Of course," Cruella replied confidently. "As long as we’re not overrun, like on the third floor, we should be fine here. And like your boss said, they don't spawn and multiply like rats here."
Rather than heading to the front of the church, the group exited through one of the smaller entrances to the side. Instead of finding themselves outside, they entered a corridor where the floor was covered by a lush red rug that stretched from wall to wall and extended all the way down the corridor.
The walls were decorated with more elaborate pictures, and Eli couldn’t take his eyes off them, seeing horrific depictions of battles between humans and lizardmen. As they progressed down the corridor, the images grew even more monstrous, showing the lizardmen seizing control, standing atop tall walls with their arms stretched over their heads in celebration.
“Is this a depiction of history, or what the lizardmen wish history had been?” Eli wondered aloud.
“These are so creepy,” Cruella muttered, scratching at a painting that depicted a human strapped to a bed. Lizardmen were lined up at the sides with their mouths open as if they were screaming.
“I wonder if the goblins would pay anything for this,” Samantha asked, trying to pull one of the frames off the wall. It wouldn’t come off.
“Focus,” Simon said, nodding toward something further down the corridor.
Ahead of them stood a group of lizardmen—two ordinary ones flanking a thinner, lighter-skinned lizardman with a twisted face that looked almost humanoid. The two on the sides carried short swords and wore leather armor, while the one in the middle wore cloth and held daggers.
Lizardman Warrior. Level 22.
Lizardman Warrior. Level 22.
Cursed Lizardman Rogue. Level 28.
Behind the trio, a staff peeked over their shoulders. A fourth monster trailed behind them—a mage, probably, judging by the choice of weapon. However, Eli couldn’t see it clearly enough to inspect.
“Finally, some action!” Cruella exclaimed, charging down the corridor.
“Wait!” Simon barked, but she didn’t listen. Eli, Samantha, and Simon ran after her at a much slower pace, only reaching the halfway point when Cruella reached the monsters. The lizardmen patiently waited for her.