Jonathan realized that this was a perfect chance to train his weapon mastery skill. As of late, he had been forced to rely mainly on his fists because of the strength of his opponents, but these goblins were great fodder for honing his lesser skills upon.
“Hey, Hushar!” He called out. “Make me a club!”
The Uthraki nodded and summoned black rock to his left arm, turning it into an oblong cylinder of obsidian. He threw it over to Jonathan, who caught it easily.
With the club in one hand, Jonathan began to lay into the goblins, hitting them so hard that many were sent flying up into the sky. Some of the trolls headed his way, but with the amount of force behind his blows, he was able to break their bones with ease. That toppled them where they stood, allowing him to cave in their brains with a Void enhanced smash.
Edgar was quickly racking up quite the killstreak, his skills optimal for fighting against hordes of weaker enemies. The essence provided here was minimal, likely adjusted to fit how many enemies there were. As they went, Jonathan noticed something interesting. The monsters killed by them did not respawn.
As hordes of goblins charged across the ash streaked plains, their number started to decrease, slowly at first, and then rapidly. The trolls fared no better, breaking themselves on the rock that was Jonathan and his two companions.
As he fought, Jonathan lowered his stats somewhat, trying to eke out some training benefit from this fight. His club hissed through the air around him, able to find the weak spots on the monsters nearby. Though, he only had to do that for the trolls, as the goblins were simply pulped. He was finding that because of the nature of his advanced Pathway skill, he was just as skilled with a club as he was with his fists. However, he was limited by a lack of proper weaponry. His gauntlets were leagues better than the crude stone club that Hushar had given him.
However, he let himself suffer through it, in the name of progress. Actually trying to fight the technique starved goblins with his club was an exercise in frustration, as they seemed to prefer to throw themselves, claws and fangs outstretched, towards him. All he was really able to do was bat them away like an especially obnoxious ball made out of leathery skin.
Still, he tried to make himself complete the movement in as graceful a fashion as possible, using every part of his body in his swings. He was quickly growing bored. Although the average level in this dungeon was quite high, it was made entirely up of fodder. The trolls were Elite ranked monsters, but they were still quite weak compared to him.
“Where the hell is the boss?” He wondered out loud.
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“Careful, you might summon it,” Edgar cautioned.
“That’s the point.”
However, no such boss came, not until far later in the dungeon when almost all of the creatures had died. Jonathan had leveled twice in that time, the high concentration of monsters finally paying dividends, despite how little essence they provided.
As the last monster fell, Jonathan felt himself being forcibly turned to a far off corner of the battlefield, where a lone goblin reached out to a troll, its body dripping with blood. Red energy sparked around the creature, and suddenly, the troll was leaping to its feet, uncaring of its wounds. It lifted the goblin up in one hand. Jonathan raised an eyebrow. This was the first time he had seen something like this in a dungeon. It seemed almost like a scripted event from a video game.
The goblin and troll roared in unison, the former’s voice reedy and hoarse, and the latter’s fueled by tons of muscular flesh. Naturally, they only heard the troll’s exclamation. As the goblin and troll finished bonding, the troll began to expand, becoming one of the massive creatures that Jonathan recognized from their travels in the exterior Breakbone Hills.
The monster lumbered forward, its body casting a shadow over the land. The goblin on top beat its tiny chest, and howled at the sky. A wave of energy transferred from it to the troll, further empowering it. Jonathan was getting a bit tired of all the posturing, and he simply flicked a ball of Void energy forward, the black hole slamming into the troll’s torso. It imploded, sucking out a large chunk of the creature’s body.
To Jonathan’s surprise, the creature did not die, instead letting out a howl of rage. Energy played across its body, and the wound slowly began to heal. Other parts of the body shriveled up and desiccated as the massive wound healed, but overall, the creature was still in good shape. The goblin riding it let out a maniacal cackle, and pointed forwards.
The troll reached down and grabbed at the earth, pulling up a massive chunk of stone from the ground. Then it lobbed it at Jonathan, putting the force of a medium sized missile into. The air around the projectile was forced out of the way, and the rock was heated to a cherry red by the friction.
Jonathan curled his lip, and cocked back his fist. Channeling his power into himself, he sent his stamina racing into his fist. Then he focused his energy, and struck. The piece of rock, five or six times larger than he was, contained enough force to level a large building. However, his fist was far stronger. It connected with a thunderous bang, and the rock split in two.
Jonathan roared, and put his back into the punch, sending the halves flying back towards their sender. The goblin’s eyes bugged out comically, and then it was reduced to a smear of blood and bone on the rock as it impacted the monster. The troll turned from side to side, a look of mindless stupidity on its face.
Hushar streaked forward, wreathed in fire, and chopped off the monster’s head with a single, mighty blow. The monster fell to its knees, and then collapsed, dead.
The dungeon faded away, and they were deposited on the ashy hills of the surrounding land. There was no loot. As a low level dungeon, at least compared to their strength, the essence was considered to be reward enough.