Our team left the Dwarven party behind and followed Kirana to one of the smaller buildings; an office of sorts. There, she stops and points at a three meters wide dark tunnel that slopes downwards into the darkness. "My Dad is down there. His threads continue down that tunnel."
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Roy vigorously summons his shield and begins walking in, of course, we follow. I took a few large steps to catch up and target the forehead of Roy's helmet, conjuring a red colored Light.
"Can you use your armor to contain it, so we can turn it on or off?" I ask him, conjuring another on my helmet. Due to the hole on the center of my trilattic plates, one layer of cover alone does not perfectly contain the light, but a few overlapping plates does the job. I then did the same for everyone; makeshift miners helmets!
Combat summary
Enemies slain:
Gnomelem Worker lv 55 x 80
Gnomelem Guard lv 65 x 4
4,660 syscred and 43,150 exp awarded
As we trudge on, I sneak a peek at my combat updates. The gains are nice, though, those are some pretty weird names… I'll stick with calling them Golems. Finally, maybe a hundred meters deep, sounds of intense activities enter our ears; the creaking sound of old wheels, the rumbles of falling rocks, oftentimes the thump of dropped objects, and many others. Hence, we proceed with greater caution.
Eventually, our tunnel opens into a large cavern amassed in a flurry of activity. Golems karting barrels of stones, others breaking massive chunks into uniformed shapes, while more Golems come and go, hauling barrels of stuff off to who knows where. Interspaced along the walls are more Golems carrying a different design; sturdier and wielding weapons, these are Golem Guards. And standing statue-still at center point, is a much cooler looking Golem; an Overseer!
Now, I'm somewhat of a dilemma, as there is no way the others can survive assaults from level 55 and above enemies without me, while waiting for me to whittle down their numbers. I gesture for the other to fall back and follow them, we move a little further up before anyone makes a noise.
"Those are level 55!" Roy says in a yelled-whisper, his expression shows both fear and excitement.
"Yeah, they're mighty durable too. And I'm afraid that aggroing one would also draw in the others. I'll be fine as they are slow and my attributes are much higher than they should be. But what about you guys?" I ask them.
According to what I can tell from Mana Sense and my feline night vision, the chamber is maybe 600 meters wide and thousands of meters long, it goes on in a slightly downward slope for as far as my eyes can see, which is really not all that far due to the winding way the tunnel is created. But, just within the scopes of my Mana Sense plus sight, there are roughly about another 200 golems; about 60 of which are the Guards variant. And the one Overseer, of course.
It is worth mentioning that my Inspect now works with Mana Sense, and Soul Sense, and any other senses—it always has, I just did not know until informed otherwise by Singapore's lead spellcaster; PingPing, during a casual gathering. So, we will now need to take out that Overseer first and foremost, Inspecting it tells me its a level 95 enemy.
To start with, I cast Shape Stone and slightly modify about three meters of the tunnel neck that leads into their chamber to make it smoother, at the same time making its angle a slight bit steeper. Then, targeting that 3 x 3 smoothened area, I cast Latent Coating and made it slippery. I did not stop at that, adjacent to my greasy coating, on our side of the tunnel; I planted every available centimeter of the ground, say about a 1 meter thick line from one wall to another, with SmartMines.exe. Ten meters from that point we build a choke point. By taking from the walls behind us, I made an inward-facing cliff that only opens for about 50 centimeters at the top. Here the other will lay on their belly to snipe at our enemies while I toy with their mobility from ground level.
We got into positions, them as planned while I come as close as possible to our SmartMines to begin drawing their attention, just in case, I recast Latent Coating on its designated 3 x 3 spot. As an introductory greeting, I charge 500 mana into the Beam Torrent I had conjured and mounted to my left forearm, set to shoot out water elemented beams, I aim at the Overseer's torso and shoot!
My water attuned beam strikes true! Hitting its upper chest near where a human heart should be. The construct almost got knocked back, but managed to step back and catch its balance. Its mechanical eyes follow the beam back to its source… still tanking my attack, it points at me and yells in an unfamiliar language. Causing every single Golem within my sights to drop whatever they are doing or holding in favor of rushing at me.
Of course rather than coming close enough to attack me, they slip on the floor and slide back down. … multiple times in single-minded pursuit. Seeing this, the Overseer took a heavy step forward, then another, all against the pressure of my spell. He kept stepping forth, ignoring the small-deepening hole my beam is inflicting upon its chest. This small hole is the mere limit of a spherical beam…
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As I stare at the point of impact, I was reminded of the proverb; Dripping water hollows out stone. A beam is no droplets of water but what about a concentrated amount of high pressure water instead? I gently infuse the barrel with more of my mana and forcefully restructure the end half of my current spherical gun barrel to narrow into a stretched triangular figure. The increased pressure slightly pushes me back before I reorient my aim, then carefully, I trace the beam across its neck. Very slowly, but much faster than previously, the beam corrodes the Overseer's physique.
Typical; all things come to an end. Including the mana I had invested into the attack, my beam ended as I was about two thirds from successfully beheading it. Now free from the pressure, it runs forth and leaps past the suspiciously smooth three meters area, straight into the SmartMine field, triggering four at once. Four bouts of flame shoots up and engulfs it… doing no visible damage.
Haste! Conjure Weapon! Unthinkingly, I release the support spell I had prepared. And hastily conjure a flail like weapon, but enlarged into the size of a wrecking ball. In a flurry of movement, I spin 360–720°… 1080 degrees! Bringing the flail along horizontally to build up momentum before smashing it down, hard! On the Overseer's left ears above where the water beam-slash had almost successfully beheaded it, aiming to smack that head off. The cracks widened, but its material proved resilient. Of course, what one hit cannot accomplish, more hits can. Two extra smacks later, amid desperate evasions, the Overseer's head lies broken in a corner. While its body, now headless but still functioning fine, seems to have lost all its senses, stumbling around and destroying things it is not meant to. Narrow beams eventually took it down… after the Overseer's fall, it then became a simple game of grinding away the remaining golems while reapplying new layers of Latent Coating.
Slain Gnomelem Overseer lv 95
95 syscred and 1504 exp awarded
Combat summary
Enemies slain, participants 3 - 5:
Gnomelem Worker lv 55 x 100
Gnomelem Guard lv 65 x 75
2,594 syscred and 25,807 exp awarded
You are now level 25
Skill obtained Mental Resistance
Skill level up, Mental Resistance 1 > 2
Skill level up, Intimidate 19 > 20
Level 20 Intimidate bonus applied
Skill level up, Deception 2 > 3
Skill level up, Evasion 22 > 24
Skill level up, All-Weapons Proficiency 17 > 19
Skill level up, Dodge Roll 18 > 19
Skill level up, SYMPHONY 23 > 24
Skill level up, All-Armors Proficiency 11 > 14
Beam Torrent - Journeyman Rank, Intermediate mastery expanded
Sneaking a peek at my updates, I invest all 11 free Ap from the last two level ups to Wisdom—my lowest attribute besides Charisma—before closing the interface. As expected, danger begets growth! Though getting Mental Resistance is bothering me, where or when did I get exposed to any mental attack? The Intimidate bonus simply boosts my intimidating-factor for every extra thing under my arsenal that the target does not understand; fear of the unknown in a nutshell.
We are currently following Kirana's Karmic Thread, delving deeper and lower into the mines. There had been encounters with stray Workers that the team took care of; metaphorically, one Hp at a time. But all in all, the delve was uneventful. The mine so far has been stripped bare of any resources, honestly, the only thing I currently fear is running out of oxygen. But everything seems fine so far.
After walking for what felt like half an hour, we arrive at another cavern, an exact replica of the one above. So, I replicate our previous strategy, just without the SmartMines and with one of my Parallel Thoughts readying a Conjure Weapon. All set, I shoot my narrow beam at its neck!
Things went much better this time, the simple minded Worker and Guards were, as seen previously, hindered by the slippery floor while my focused beam managed to cut off the Overseer's head easily enough in a sneak attack. Lacking any of the senses golems need to function, it slips and is easily enough destroyed, along with its lesser companions.
Combat summary
Enemies slain, participants 3 - 5:
Gnomelem Worker lv 55 x 150
Gnomelem Guard lv 65 x 100
Gnomelem Overseer lv 95 x 1
3,711 syscred and 35,411 exp awarded
Our journey continues, more tunnels leading into another cavern. This one the largest so far, it also seems to have more enemies than the previous two combined; two Overseers even. We paused for a few minutes to discuss a better way to tackle this. But, if it ain't broke, don't fix it; we ended up with a similar strategy—the only difference this time being, having to dual cast Beam Torrent—and a little more than an hour of grinding at the Golems later and we were done with our third encounter.
Combat summary
Enemies slain, participants 3 - 5:
Gnomelem Worker lv 55 x 300
Gnomelem Guard lv 65 x 225
Gnomelem Overseer lv 95 x 2
7,829 syscred and 75,047 exp awarded
"Zen, give me Detect Karmic Threads. He's close, I think… I can kinda feel that is so!" Kirana says. So I cast it on her, no questions asked. And soon, I follow her as she too, follows those invisible threads. Leading us through the caverns past various small tunnels that lead to who knows where… finally she entered one that brought us into a room containing smaller walled and barred sections; a jail.
Within are several Dwarves in varying states of malnutrition, the smell is inhumane, most are mere skins and bones, a few no longer alive. Ignoring the brutal sight, I can't help but feel their pleading stares as we continue on to the last cell; where within the crumpled figure of a person, a human, bent over in apparent pain may be found.
"DAD!"