Rebel entered the room with caution and used her stealth skills to the best of her ability. Each step was silent as she slowly moved her way into the room and controlled her breathing so as not to make any additional sound. If you did not know she was there, it would be incredibly difficult to notice anything. As her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness of these caverns, she was able to see the area fairly well and could make out the cavern walls. Although this area was fairly large compared to the narrow passageways she had been exploring, it was still only about 40ft wide. It was definitely larger lengthwise as it seems to be about 80ft long.
As Rebel was about to indicate to the group that everything looked all clear, something caught the corner over here eye. She looked over to one of the large boulders that rose out of the floor in this room and noticed that something felt off about it. She moved closer to examine it and suddenly stopped in her tracks as it struck her what the problem was. The forms and curves of the rocks, the lines of different textures and different materials that it was made up of. This rock was actually not a rock at all, it was a Golem similar to the ones found outside the dungeon. As she realized what it was, a glint reflected off of its gemstone eyes before they were illuminated with a magical glow and other figures began to rise from the ground in the surroundings as well.
"There are Golems!"
Rebel yelled to the group as she hastily retreated. Immediately after hearing her yell the group went into action with many taking up practiced moves like they had done this many times before. Sun shot out a blast of radiant energy towards the ceiling and as it impacted a stalactite, it began to create a luminous glow that filled the majority of the chamber and made everything visible.
"That should last about 10 minutes!"
Rebel jumped in behind the group and Gii dashed out to the front and took stock of the situation. He noticed that there were 7 golems scattered in various parts of the cavern with 2 of them being large 10 ft tall golems that looked to be guarding the exit on the other side of the room. He peeked at the information above their head
[Golem: Level 25]
He looked around at the other 5 smaller Golems that were only around a head taller than himself and took stock of their information as well.
[Lesser Golem: Level 20]
As he was contemplating where he should head towards, Dan's voice echoed in the chamber.
"Gii can you handle one of the larger ones by yourself?"
"If Pixie can keep my HP from falling to critical levels then I should be fine!"
As he responded to the question, Gii rushed over towards one of the larger golems and blocked its path to the rest of the group. As he was rushing over he didn't forget to activate his punishment buffs and pulled out a basic sword he had prepared for this dungeon raid. As much as he was used to using the smaller daggers, At his current level it was about time for him to upgrade a little bit.
As Gii approached the large Golem did not give him any chance to attack first and raised its large fist above its head before smashing it down on top of him
[-405]
Gii immediately retaliated and swung his sword to slash it across the golems abdomen
[-660]
Gii wasn't too surprised at the increase in his damage numbers as he had decided to sacrifice his attack speed with the smaller daggers for more damage output and the larger weapon. Daggers were good for the humans he had been targeting up until now, but he knew this dungeon would require a more substantial weapon because one of the hallmark features of the golems were their high resistances, especially in the later stages of the dungeon.
As Gii engaged the first large Golem, the other one reached into its side and pulled out a large boulder and through it with great strength towards the back of the group. The boulder shattered on the ground as it sprayed debris in a radius and Sun, Dan and Term were all struck and took damage.
[-73]
[-81]
[-73]
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None of them seemed fazed as they took damage and Term rushed out to meet 2 of the smaller golems while drawing his weapons. Using his high agility stat he weaved and dodged their punches and unleashed 2 slashes across the chest and head of one of them.
[-798]
[-598]
After the 2 damage numbers floated above its head the smaller golem shattered to pieces as it only had a little bit more then 800 hp. The larger ones had both more hp and higher restances, however the current version of the golems they were fighting did not output a lot of damage.
While term took out one of the smaller golems, Sun had a moment to prepare a buff spell and a ray of radiant light fell down onto Queen who was engaged with 3 of the smaller golems herself. Their punches impacted onto her armor and damage numbers appeared above her head
[-95]
[-105]
[-95]
Between her heavy armor and the buff spell, nearly 25% of the incoming damage was mitigated. Even still, the damage she took was not an insignificant amount as she currently only had around 1200hp, so this was nearly a fourth of her entire health pool. Queen Gripped her longsword in her hand and unleashed her most powerful Area of Effect attack the <
[-315]
[-288]
[-341]
Rebel took the opportunity just after the AOE attack to jump from the shadows and sink her dagger into the head of one of the golems
[-252]
Critical hit!
[-489]
The large damage from the critical hit was able to push over the edge and kill the golem. On the other side of the room, Fatal had charged over with his massive greatsword and a crazed look on his face. A blood red aura covered his blade and he chopped down with a fierce strength that caused the air to burst with a loud noise.
[-1911]
The massive and jaw dropping damage number not only stunned the group but it also completely bisected the large golem completely and it disappeared after falling into to halves on either side. Gii took another hit from the golem before he noticed a swirl of rose petals and a warm wind engulfed him
[-371]
[+250]
Truthfully Gii would still have more hp then everyone else in the group even after taking to massive hits, but no one would ever complain about getting healed. He immediately charged out with his sword again in retaliation and stabbed it deeply into the chest of the golem
[-933]
The damage number was enough to wipe out the remaining HP of the golem and Gii turned to look at how the rest of the group was fairing. Sure enough between everyone contributing they were able to make short work of the remaining smaller golems and the combat had ended without any real concern. The group, being the veteran gamers they were, immediately began sorting through the drops from the golems and noticed that a large portion of uncut gemstones were the most valuable items out of everything. Dan turned to the group and asked the question.
"The way I look at it we can divide this up in one of a couple ways. Either we divide things up now between us, or we can wait until after we clear the dungeon to divide the spoils. Do we want to vote on it?"
"I vote that we divide it up now"
Everyone turned to Term and looked like they had expected this suggestion from him. Gii spoke up at this time.
"I'd rather just do it at the end since that seems like it will be less tedious."
"I agree."
Sun spoke up in agreement while Fatal and Pixie remained indifferent. Dan had already been leaning towards deciding at the end anyway, so he made the executive decision and ended the discussion. The group spent some time recovering and Rebel went up to Fatal to start a conversation.
"Fatal you were able to one shot that golem, that's crazy! your strength stat must be ridiculous!"
Fatal only nodded and spoke a single sentence
"It's not bad"
Pixiebob spoke up on his behalf
"He hits really hard but that's only if he can hit anything! We are lucky the golems aren't very agile because he always has very exaggerated swings and ends up missing everything with a little bit of evasiveness."
"You must play with Fatal a bunch to know his playstyle so well?"
"Well yes and no. He's actually my little bro in real life so of course I would have some idea of his abilities."
"Bro..."
Fatal seemed distressed but the rest of the group came to a realization as they had already somewhat noticed the closeness of these two even if they hadn't said much. Gii also realized that was why pixiebob was able to be so close with Fatal who was well known in his previous life to be a solo player.
Looks like I can't rely on the information from my previous life completely.
"In actuality this is the first time I've been able to play together with him since we started. This kid avoided me the whole Beta!"
"I just prefer to play on my own, plus it's hard to play in a group with my current class."
"Ah, because you are a berserker right?"
Fatal nodded at Rebel's question and responded
"The longer a fight goes on the harder it is to keep control."
"Then we should just keep the enemies in front of you so you don't have to think about it."
Fatal looked over at Gii in surprise before Pixie's laughter cut between them
"HAHA He's the right man! You don't need to worry about it, everyone here is really skilled!"
Pixie winked and gave a thumbs up to Gii and he nodded and gave a thumbs up back as he realized that Pixie must have been worried about how to get a chance to play together with his brother for awhile now. Most of the group recovered very quickly and with the addition of the 2 healers helping everyone out, they were able to start moving into the next area of the dungeon.
That being the case, the dungeon itself remained a cavernous maze that was difficult to navigate without getting lost. There were branching paths again, but this time when Rebel went ahead down the different paths, she noticed that all of them led to various different cavern openings similar to the one they fought the golems in. Knowing what to look for this time, she was able to determine the stone formations that looked like potential golems. The only downside is that they would not have the information appear above their head telling you it was an enemy unless you entered into their aggro range.
Rebel was able to identify 4 possible routes, all of which led to another open area with golems in it. After some discussion and analysing of the situation they could see that these rooms all had the possibility of containing about 10-15 golems of different sizes. This was double the size of the initial group they fought so it was obvious they would be given a little bit more of a test compared to before. That being said, everyone here was a veteran player who was confident in their skills so they were not worried about the outcome. Eventually they decided that discussing their options was not very productive and chose one of the rooms to enter at random.