With his new auras active, the group continued and soon found a good group of monsters to test them out on.

Eli stood back at first while Simon and Cruella moved forward to attack a pair of cursed lizardmen fighters. Like with their last encounter, Eli cast Silence on the one cursed lizardman mage. Despite the misty film over its eyes, the mage managed to look surprised at having its spells cut off.

That done, he cast Agility, Bless, and Embrace The Dying Light, buffing the entire party with one cast for each buff. Thoroughly enjoying the quality of life feature, he walked forward as the melee classes fought.

The range of the offensive auras wasn’t as long as his defensive ones, but they soon reached the monsters, making the two lizardman fighters move slower. It wasn't by much, but still enough that Eli could visibly tell the difference. The melee combat shifted from being almost evenly matched to Simon and Cruella having a definite edge. They scored more hits and deflected incoming attacks with ease.

Not entirely satisfied, Eli moved closer still before triggering his newly acquired talent to make his auras overload. The shockwave pushed all three monsters back, slamming them into the wall and the floor. All three immediately moved to get up, but they were laughably slow.

“They’re sluggish,” Simon observed, glancing at Eli.

“Like they're walking through syrup,” Eli agreed as Simon and Cruella bent down and slit the throats of the lizardman fighters, killing them before they could react.

The mage remained alive for the moment, and Eli counted the seconds until the effect wore off. “Two… three... four.”

The mage resumed full speed but looked confused.

“Out of mana?” Eli guessed, seeing the mage fumble.

Unable to cast a spell, the mage turned to flee.

“Not today,” Cruella said with, plunging a short sword through its back.

Samantha stood there, stunned, looking at Eli. “Good thing you’re on our side. Maybe I pick have Commander as my second class, after all.”

Eli finally felt he was coming into his own and becoming powerful in his own right. His damage output was still lacking, but utility-wise, things were looking up.

They were about to set out when Eli got a message from James.

James: I think we need help, Eli. Think we found the place.

Eli: Where?

James: Go out the way we exited the building. Follow the street up to a place that looks like whoever designed it was a lover of Russian brutalism. Looks almost like a prison. There’s a basement. Hurry, we are getting royally screwed over here, and Agnes can’t keep up.

Eli: We’re coming.

The rest of his party looked at him.

“A message?” Simon asked.

Eli nodded. “It’s the other guys. They need help.”

“Where?”

“Back the way we came,” Eli said. “We have to hurry.”

They made it outside without issue, but plenty of groups of enemies still roamed the streets. At first, they tried walking around to avoid attracting attention, but soon gave it up.

“There are too many of them,” Simon said. “What do we do?”

Eli looked around, noticing several groups approaching. He made a split decision and pointed up the street to a towering building.

“We run,” he said.

The four of them set off running. The lizardmen turned their heads in the group’s direction. Some followed at a slow pace at first, then matched their speed.

“There are more and more of them,” Simon panted, still keeping his armor on.

“Think they’ll lose interest, like in games?” Samantha asked.

“I really hope so,” Cruella muttered as they spotted the building James mentioned.

It did indeed look like a prison, complete with a tall metal fence surrounding the entire structure with an open gate at the front.

“Let’s get inside the building and see what happens,” Eli said, pointing while running.

Many lizardmen followed, but Eli noticed the healers and mages lagging far behind. Some were even losing interest in the pursuit, while cursed lizardmen fighters and rogues kept coming.

Eli pointed to the front doors. “Inside!”

The metal door to the building stood wide open, welcoming them in.

“We’ll have to turn and fight once we’re inside,” Eli said. “The door can be a choke point.”

“There’s like 30 of them!” Samantha shouted.

“Yeah?” Eli replied.

“I say let’s do it!” Cruella laughed—a mad, wild laugh.

“I vote we close the doors!” Samantha protested.

“I’m with Samantha,” Simon said, as they came to a stop inside.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Doors! Right!” Eli said, nodding. “Good idea.”

Unfortunately, the doors didn’t budge.

“Get ready!” Eli screamed, turning to face the wave of lizardmen.

“What are you doing?” Simon shouted. “Get behind me!”

It was Eli's turn to laugh. “No, I’ll get them with the auras, then you hit them with spells. You have 4 seconds from my shockwave! Everyone ready?”

“Oh, I have a new one to try,” Simon said, sounding almost excited.

The lizardmen threw themselves toward Eli. He waited until the last moment to activate his new skill. The shockwave pushed those at the front back and the large group of monsters clumped up even more as the slowing effect hit them.

He threw down the Sigil of Light after toggling Harming Healer. The area of the spell was large enough to damage all of them, and it did a surprising amount of damage. Samantha released an orb of light—not Light in the Dark, but a new spell. It burned brightly, arcing over Eli’s head into the crowd of lizardmen before exploding with terrible force.

The lizardmen wheezed as pure light, rather than fire, burned them alive. Damage-over-time effects and debuffs built off each other, creating a chain that ravaged the enemy lines.

“Hammer of Light!” Simon shouted, holding up his sword over his head.

An enormous hammer crafted from light formed above his head before slamming into the lizardmen when he brought his hand down. It crushed a good number of them in an instant and injured many more. Explosions wrecked the remaining lizardmen as spells flew from Cruella, who’d opted to stay back and use the Mage part of her classes. It drained all her mana but after 3 seconds, few lizardmen remained standing.

Eli used his Heal spell to take chunks of health from single targets, while Simon and Cruella rushed in with their weapons, thrusting, slashing, stabbing, and gouging.

Ding! You have reached level 42.

All of them stood around, panting, surprised at their damage output.

“Yes!” Cruella shouted, throwing her fists into the air. “Get wrecked, lizardmen!”

They looted the whole bunch in a hurry without really checking the items, then headed through an inner gate and down a set of stairs.

Sounds of fighting reached them before they saw anything. Clashes of metal, people screaming at each other, and the hissing sound of lizardmen echoed down the hall. Simon entered the room first, followed by Cruella and Samantha, with Eli bringing up the rear.

Making sure his auras were active again, Eli focused on the first health bar he saw. Dana was at about a quarter health, struggling to fend off attacks from two lizardmen. He healed her and moved to the middle of the large room so his aura would affect all enemies. The room was filled with tables and chairs, almost like a cafeteria. The floor was covered in the same red carpet as the corridor they had passed through, but parts of it were now soaked in blood. Eli buffed and healed, looking around for Agnes. He found her in a heap on the floor, her health dangerously low.

He healed her and rushed up to his former party member, shaking her awake without taking his eyes off the action.

Chaos reigned. Small groups of people fought cursed lizardmen everywhere. Chairs and tables were being pushed around or even flying in the air as James and his new party battled with no sense of cohesion.

"Invisible!" James shouted.

Samantha groaned. "Not again."

She cast Spreading Light, and it revealed two enemies who were unseen and carefully approaching Eli. He healed-bombed them a few times, trying to force them to change targets. They did not.

Simon and Cruella came in and brought some order to the fight, picking off one cursed lizardman at a time. Cruella threw herself into a dance with the two monster rogues, ignoring many of the wounds she received, knowing Eli would heal her.

Without much of a choice, Eli spammed heal on her. It forced him to forego healing everyone else, but then he remembered the node he'd picked in the Heal skill tree. Focusing, he made the healing spread out across the entire group, which at least let him heal everyone in his party at the same time. To further mitigate damage, he triggered his auras, slowing the lizardmen’s movements to a crawl.

There were no lizardman healers or mages in the room, so the second aura didn’t do much. Eli quickly switched over to Aura of Defense and Aura of Victory, realizing the cooldown only applied to active auras. With a little micromanagement, he could cycle through his auras.

He activated his second set of auras. No lizardmen were caught in the shockwave, but it did give the overwhelmed people some time to breathe when attacks barely damaged them at all and their attributes were greatly enhanced. With Eli's support and the damage from the rest of the Ravenous Barbarians, the remaining cursed lizardmen soon fell.

With the death of the last lizardman, silence fell over the room. The only sound came from Eli as he healed everyone back to full health. "What happened?" he asked.

James gestured up at the glowstones where the wall met the ceiling. "It was dark in here when we entered. In the middle of the room, the lights turned on, revealing a room full of lizardmen. We focused on healers and mages to kill them quickly, but one of them cast some sort of spell on Agnes."

"I could not use my spells," Agnes said, finally standing after being healed with a helping hand from Simon. In that state, the old woman looked frail and shaken.

"Silence," Eli said.

She nodded, dry-washing her hands. "It was terrible."

The air in the room felt heavy. At first, Eli didn’t see why. Then he saw them. Two wooden planks sticking out of the ground behind a fallen table. He tried to summon an image of the fallen group they’d met back in the corridor, but their faces were muddled.

"Who did you lose?" Eli asked.

"Marsh and a woman called Veronica," James replied.

"The security guard?" Eli asked.

James nodded.

"Damn," Samantha said.

Silence reigned for another brief moment.

"So… do you want to continue?" Eli asked.

"I think the room behind that door is where the quest wants us to go," James confirmed, nodding to a closed door on the opposite side from where they’d entered. "One of the mages in here escaped through there. From the glimpse I got, it didn't look like a fun time."

"Let’s go," Dana said.

"No, I don’t think so," Agnes replied.

"What?" James asked.

Agnes shook his head. "This floor is too difficult. Two people have already died because I couldn’t heal them."

"That wasn’t your fault," Dana said.

"We share responsibility," Agnes added. "Me for being unable to heal them, and the rest of you for charging into the unknown like young bucks. We are returning to the third floor—or I am, at least."

"We can’t just leave those people!" James argued.

"And how many more in our party need to die?" Agnes retorted. "You may stay if you like, but I’m going back."

"Me too," one of the members said—a burly man with thick arms, carrying an axe. The rest, other than James and Dana, nodded their agreement.

Eli turned to the two of them. "We have two spots available if you want to come."

James and Dana looked at each other, then agreed. Eli added them to Ravenous Barbarians. Without another word, Agnes cast a Warp, teleporting herself and three others out to the 4 floor.

"We should continue," James said.

"We should," Simon agreed. "You’re a tank, I take it?"

James tapped his shield with the flat of his sword. "Sure am."

"You and I should stay up front, then."

Eli sent a message to Dana privately, not wanting to have the conversation in public.

Eli: Are you good with this, or do you still harbor an intense dislike for me?

Dana: I’m not your greatest fan, but I can see why you made the choices you made.

Eli: That’s good. I’m sorry. I should have talked it out beforehand.

Dana: It was chaotic. Let’s just drop it.

Eli spoke out loud. "So, Dana, you decided to multi-class?"

She nodded from where she was sitting on one of the tables, her legs crossed in the lotus position. "The arrows stopped being effective, and the Bard class doesn't provide much damage-wise."

She raised her hands. "So, mage it is."

Dana. Human. Skald (12) / Surge (9).

"What’s 'Surge'?" Simon asked.

"And 'Skald'?" Samantha added.

"It’s one of the lightning mage specializations," Dana explained. "And Bard, respectively. Lightning and combat buffs, pretty much."

"Cool," Cruella said, getting up from one of the chairs near the other end of the room.

"Okay," Eli said, nodding to the closed door. "We’re ready to continue?"

Cruella grinned and threw open the door.