We ventured into the 8th floor and fought a couple of groups of undead goblins, mostly warriors with a few mages. We made quick work of them and continued travelling through the dungeon. I had been wondering why we didn't see any chests in the dungeon since there should be some even though they are relatively hard to find. The chests in this dungeon would change locations according to the information we got at the adventurers guild, so it was all up to exploring the entire floor to get a chest.

We had made it to the 9th floor and the undead finally started having undead hobgoblins in their groups. The hobgoblins were acting as the leader of the undead, banding the undead together and somehow giving orders to them.

I spoke to the group while I held my sword in one hand. "The hobgoblins giving orders to the other undead. We should focus it first." Ronia nocked an arrow and said "It does seem they are far more organized than the previous floor." With that Ronia fired an arrow at the undead hobgoblin and I fired several ice shards at the group, several aiming for the hobgoblin. /

The arrow was blocked by a shield and the ice shards slammed into the ragged leather armour of the undead, punching through the armour dealing some damage and restricting movement of some of the undead goblin warriors. The hobgoblin made a ghastly roar that turned into a gurgle as he pointed towards us. Herald and Ray adjusted their grips and held steady in front. I spent the time to ready an ice spear. It would take more mana than the ice shards but it had far more piercing effect and did more damage due to its size.

The hobgoblin and goblin warriors all charged forward with their awkward gaits as they charged us. Several arrows whooshed past me and slammed into the undead, but any that were aimed at the hobgoblin were blocked by his shield. The shield itself was small round shield attached to its left arm while it held a machete in its right hand. The shield had several arrows imbedded in it and was starting to show signs of cracking. It wasn't a new shield by any standards and the rotting wood was cracking and breaking at this point.

The undead clashed with our melee fighters and Ronia launched more arrows while I finally finished the ice spear. The arrows slammed into several undead, a few of them dropping dead while the rest became like porcupines. My ice spear flew through the air with devastating speed and punched through the rotting shield of the undead hobgoblin, punching straight through its chest and pinning it to the wall behind it. The hobgoblin tried to struggle and forcefully tore its way forward, slowly shoving itself off the ice spear pinning it to the wall. It was a rather scary sight, seeing the thing struggle and push itself off the spear.

I didn't give it the time to escape easily though, as I fired several ice shards at it. Its shield was now a pile of broken chunks of wood on the floor so all of my ice shards slammed into its chest. One slammed into its eye and burst its head apart. The undead fell limp after that and I focused my attention on the remaining undead. There was only 2 left alive which Herald cleaved in half with his sword. He seemed to have used a skill to do so but that was still impressive.

"Well, that's all of them." Said Herald as he cleaned the pitch black blood of the undead off of his sword. We took a small breather and looted the corpses, getting more of the tiny cores. We continued to travel further into the dungeon, meeting more groups of undead. It seemed that every group of undead had a hobgoblin leader. We focused the hobgoblin first and when he died the rest of the undead became far more unorganized like undead usually are. It made killing the rest far easier so we decided on a simple yet effective plan of having me and Ronia focus fire the undead hobgoblin. Ronia would fire several arrows to get its attention and I would ready an ice spear to pierce its defences and kill it. Usually, it would get pinned to the wall or floor but sometimes I would hit it in the head and outright kill it.

With that plan we kept travelling until we got to the 10th floor portal. We talked for a bit but decided that we could take a look at the very least. "Isn't the boss on the 10'th floor?" Asked Ray as we walked along the 10th floor.

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I replied while keeping a lookout for undead. "Yep the boss is at the end of the 10th floor. According to the guild its just an undead hobgoblin berserker. Nothing too scary." We chatted a bit more, such as ways to defeat the boss. I say boss but its really not even strong enough to be considered a boss to any reasonably strong adventurer. It's just a boss in name. The boss of the 10th floor was known as the newbie crusher as newbies would be the ones to often die to it or get heavily injured from it. We kept travelling but all of a sudden I felt my mana sense pick something up nearby. It was a small flicker that disappeared soon after.

I tried to focus on my mana sense and find whatever it was but I couldn't find it, only catching an occasional blip. I swapped to my mist vision and tried looking for signs of vitality. but saw nothing. Undead didn't give off vitality so I knew it wasn't some adventurer looking to murder us and steal our loot. I still spoke up and warned the rest while I turned off my mist vision.

"There's something nearby stalking us. I can't get a good read on its location but its been following us for a bit. It's definitely an undead that's for sure, that's about all I can detect." With that warning, the others started to look around us and tried to see if they could spot the monster and we kept slowly moving forwards, far more cautiously than before. We kept moving but nothing appeared for a few minutes. Just as I was about to tell the others that we might want to turn around and leave, it struck. A rapid moving blur flew at us. Herald saw and even though he was surprised he shoved his way in front of it, shield at the ready. He held his shield firmly and braced for impact. The blur slammed into the shield and we heard a lot of scraping noises before the thing dashed away, making Herald miss his swing.

Adrenaline was pumping now and we kept a firm eye out for the creature, and saw it briefly to our right before it tried to dash at Ronia. I quickly cast an earth wall skill but due to how rushed it was the wall wasn't firm and the creature tore through the wall. It did however, slow it down a large amount. We finally saw what the creature was and it turned out to be an undead hobgoblin assassin. Herald was able to get in front of the creature thanks to me delaying it and fended off the creature with his shield. He slashed at it and barely cut its stomach as it retreated.

"The hells a hobgoblin assassin doing on the 10'th floor? Aren't these supposed to be on like the 15'th floor?" I called out in surprise. What surprised me more was the undead freaking spoke! It was very gargled and hard to understand but it spoke nonetheless. "Shiny...Sparkly!! Gobmi want SHINY!" That was the only thing it said before once again vanished into the surrounding shadows and circled us. I had an idea and made several walls with earth magic, blocking off behind us, making it so the monster would have to tear through the wall to circle around us.

This made it far easier to guess where the attacks would come from as it tried a few more times to attack Ronia repeatedly with Herald there to defend each time. The undead had an iron dagger in its hand that it used to attack along with its claws. Ronia spoke while keeping an eye out for the monster, saying "Is this the named monster? It did call itself Gobmi." Another clang as Herald blocked its assault and injured it with his sword, this time cutting deep into its left arm holding the dagger.

I replied after firing several ice shards in an attempt to hit it when it charged us, mostly missing due to its stupid amount of speed. "It seems to be the case. Its far faster than a normal hobgoblin assassin though." The repeated back and forth went on for another minute before the undead screamed in its gargled and broken voice in glee while it clutched something. "Gobmi get a shiny! Gobmi be back for more shiny!" With that the creature leapt away into one of the nearby tunnels. We were on guard for another minute before finally relaxing. I checked with my mana sense and didn't see any of the telltale flickers so I told the others I didn't sense it nearby anymore.

We were musing over what the hell it meant by 'getting a shiny' when Ray exclaimed in surprise. "My coins! That bastard stole money!" He quickly felt his pockets and found that there was two copper missing from his pockets. They were some loose change he hadn't put in his wallet yet and probably regretted not doing so now.

"So that named monster likes shiny stuff it seems. It ran away right after it took the two copper from Ray. We might be able to use this information to lure it out and kill it. But should we leave to inform the guild or stay and attempt to catch it?" I said while looking at Herald and Ronia. Ray was still looking dejected about being robbed by an undead of all things. We talked for a bit , discussing this before deciding we would farm this floor a bit more and deal with the named undead if we came across it, using money to distract Gobmi the named undead. I just wondered if the thing had a stash of loot and if so, how much was in its stash?