With Richard at the helm and me relieving a lot of the pressure, they were able to finally clear the floor and earn themselves a much needed rest. Trent collected the Rock Iron as previously discussed and before you knew it we were heading down towards the next floor.
Though I had something to say before we started.
“These next two floors will be way too hard for you guys without significant help. So just like what happened on the last floor I’ll be in the midst of battle with you all, but for both of these next floors I’ll head in first to get most of the attention on me. That should make it easier on you all, but it will still be dangerous, don’t forget that.”
“Thanks Raizen, we’ll be ready.”
And like that we entered the cave and most of the Goblins immediately rushed me as expected. I moved to the right slow enough that most of their attention would be on me, but of course since there were 200 Goblins in the cave, not all of them followed me, and the team was immediately put under pressure.
But they were handling it.
They weren’t necessarily better fighters now than they were earlier today, but they definitely got better at working together which seemed to make a lot of difference in the battle. Even Richard’s orders seemed to be getting better and better as the fight went on. It seems pressure really is a good tool to train people. Though I won’t admit that to the Outpost Leader.
It took maybe another 30 minutes or so before all the Goblins were killed, and everything was good to go.
And for the first time since we started all of them brought a stamina potion and downed it. I didn’t say anything because it made sense. At the end of the day all of them were still 1st Cycle while I was at the 3rd, our stamina levels were a bit different. Well at least that meant that we didn’t have to rest for too long. It was Lance’s turn to gather the Rock Iron and afterwards we advanced to the next floor.
On this floor I worked a bit harder to make sure no one died, and I ended up having to kill a lot of the Goblins myself to ensure that was the case. 400 Goblins was truly a very big number.
Due to this Brandon ended up suffering a pretty deep stab wound on his back. They managed to clear the floor despite that, and one health potion was good enough to bring him back to a state where he could keep fighting but I was still upset with myself.
I drifted too far away from them, and I didn’t make it back quick enough to stop that from happening. I know I can’t save everyone, nor do I care to, but I told them I’d keep them alive, and I almost failed at that. It was upsetting. I wasn’t fuming or anything, mainly just disappointed with myself.
I even tried to apologize but Brandon didn’t let me.
“I’m sorr..-”
“No need to apologize, I need to be stronger.”
I wasn’t one for long winded conversations, so I took his word for it and dropped it. Didn’t change how I felt though.
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Anyway, it was Richard’s turn to collect the Rock Iron and for the final time we advanced to the next floor.
I’m not sure why it was designed this way, but although this floor had one of the big guys, I felt that it was still easier than the floor with 400 goblins.
Either way I distracted the big one for a bit and they made short work of the other 50 before transitioning to the big guy and in a much more efficient manner, this floor and now the whole Dungeon was cleared.
Reward time.
Huh
That chest was a bit smaller than last time.
Richard went to open it, and all he found were Bronze Coins. 10 of them.
Interesting.
“So Raizen, how do you want to split everything?”
“Before that, something is weird here Richard.”
I never told them exactly what I got as my final reward because….well I just didn’t. Didn’t think I needed to since they would get the same exact thing, but it turns out that was wrong.
“When I cleared the Dungeon the first time, I received 20 Bronze Coins and other things. This final reward is clearly different.”
Richard and everyone else’s eyes seemed to widen at that number. Yeah it was a lot of money, even though I spent pretty much all of it already.
Richard seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, but after getting over how much money I made Lance spoke up instead.
“It was probably a first clear reward. You cleared the Dungeon first, so the reward could’ve been boosted as a reward for that. Now it could even be a solo clear reward as well, since the Dungeon recommend multiple people, the fact you did it by yourself could be included in the boost. Of course, it could even be a combination of both of those things, the only way to know for sure would be to find more Dungeons, and also have you clear this one again by yourself to see what the result would be.”
Everyone kind of just stared at him for a bit, seemingly shocked at how logical that sounded. I’m kind of surprised I didn’t think of that myself, I guess sometimes it’s easy to forget that some of the things in the Tutorial has a lot of game-like elements.
“Why are you all staring at me..”
“…That actually made a lot of sense Lance, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“That was uncalled for Trent, I’m actually very smart thank you very much.”
“Yeah yeah whatever you say.”
While the team joked around a bit, I realized that I would be coming back here tomorrow to verify what Lance said, and I need to eventually find some other Dungeons. I’m not sure if there any more close by, but it’s not like I’ve searched the entire forest yet.
Hm...now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if some of Richard’s people can help with scouting…We would cover a lot more ground…they wouldn’t even need to fight anything, just look around the area and come back at the first sign of trouble. I think someone at 1st Cycle can easily handle a job like this.
Yea...oh the prompt is here.
“Someone collect the Coins and we will meet Outside, again, don’t linger too long.”
After selecting yes on the Exit prompt, I found myself outside the Dungeon and then the others popped up soon after. Richard was last as he took time to put all the coins in his bag.
“We’ll talk about the split once we get back. For now, let’s just focus on returning to the Outpost.”
The group didn’t seem to have argument with that, and we didn’t run into any trouble on the way back. Well, we didn’t run into trouble but apparently the Outpost was attacked while we were gone.
No one died, but there were some injuries and what not. I didn’t want to hold Richard up, so I just told him to come find after he figures out everything regarding his people.
I got back to my house and simple waited while practicing using my flames a bit. I needed to actually test them out in battle, and I knew it wanted that too, but this will do for now.
The practicing was simply me creating a small ball of fire and tossing it from hand to hand. The ball was about the size of a baseball, and it only took me a few minutes to get pretty used to the feel of willing something similar to another limb for me to move around.
My flames were definitely more like a partner to me and not a tool, but I still had to will it to move according to how I wanted or needed, and that’s something I had to get accustomed to.
Knock Knock
Ah there’s Richard now.