image [https://i.imgur.com/ipdk7BB.jpeg]

Dungeon Entrance

Available dungeons:

Kili’s Root Cellar (cleared)

Sarlisa’s Garden (cleared)

The Iron Mines of Westboardia

Cog-nition Cog-nation Scout Ship

Warning: you may only leave a dungeon from the entrance or exit square!

Back to the dungeon entrance? That’s a fairly good movement, I think. I can take the mines dungeon and boost my Dungeoneer level, move backwards and hopefully kill off some more Crankscouts before they get to spawn more of them, and maybe even deal with Kevin’s metal shortage problem, which will get me better gear options.

The dungeon entrance looked the same as it did the last time Will was there. And since there weren’t any new entrances around, he managed to avoid the headache of knowing that the room hadn’t changed while seeing obvious evidence that it had.

The stairway to the Iron Mines of Westboardia was a small hill with what looked like a mine entrance leading into it. Beyond the entrance lay a torchlit stone stairway leading downwards. As usual, approaching the entrance caused its description to pop up in front of Will.

Dungeon name:

The Iron Mines of Westboardia

Difficulty: easy

Dungeon open.

The stairway was sized for a wombat. Which was, in Will’s opinion, an incredibly silly design choice. The stairs were about two centimeters tall, and a meter long. And there must have been a hundred of them in front of him.

Seriously? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just make it a ramp? Bah. I should know better than to look for common sense here, by now.

Every five meters or so, a pair of torches were set into sconces on the wall. And every ten meters, wooden scaffolding braced the ceiling.

And aren’t torches a major hazard in mines? I seem to remember something about swamp gas being explosive, I think? And I know that carbon dioxide is heavier than the air and would accumulate in the lower caves. But I guess those are Earth rules. They might not be relevant here. And it’s still classified as an easy dungeon, so it shouldn’t be an instant deathtrap, right?

Somewhat worried, but determined to at least try to clear the dungeon, Will went down the annoying stairway, which eventually led him into a large cave.

A large, and clearly man-made cave. Or, at the very least, bipedal-creature-made, since Will had no idea what type of creature had actually made them.

The ceiling was about three meters high at the center, and dropped to two meters near the walls. The walls themselves were hewn from the rock, with no effort spent on their appearance. Will could see where mining picks left holes in the rock, and the floor near the walls was littered with debris.

There were three different exists from the room, seemingly placed randomly.

Just like the previous two dungeons Will had seen, the first room was completely empty.

Choosing the first exit on his right, Will moved deeper into the dungeon. The tunnel was just as roughly hewn as the room, and seemed to twist around randomly. It was also fairly short, and quickly opened up into another large room.

The room was similar to the first, with the same slightly domed ceiling and rough walls. The main difference Will could see was a strange insectile looking creature digging at the walls.

It was about the same size as Will, and had a brown segmented carapace. Two large, feathery antennae rose up from its tiny head. The creature stood on four strangely joined legs, and had two smaller handlike appendages that it used to scratch at the rock. A long tail tipped with an inverted triangle rose up behind it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

But perhaps the strangest detail was its head itself. Rather than the same brown color as the rest of its body, the creatures face was completely white, except for black circles surrounding its eyes and the base of its antennae.

As soon as Will had entered the room, the creature sniffed audibly, and immediately turned to face him.

Will had just enough time to notice the creature’s strange face paint before it shrieked loudly. Suddenly, Will couldn’t keep his balance. The ground seemed to tilt randomly around him, making him nauseous and causing him to stumble. The Mana Mandrill, which entered the room a head of Will, seemed to be in the same boat. Which seemed to be a rather apter metaphor than usual, considering the feeling of sea sickness that the monster’s shriek had invoked.

Still shrieking, the monster approached Will, completely ignoring the Light Beast. The thing seemed to have an endless supply of air to shriek with, and Will just couldn’t stay standing under the sonic assault.

With the unending shriek in effect, most of Will’s attacks were completely negated. He couldn’t even stand up, let alone run and charge the monster. His claws were just as useless. He couldn’t put any strength behind his limbs to attack with.

Even most of his Mage skill was out of the question, since anything requiring aiming was bound to miss its target.

Which left Will with just one option.

Thundershade Burst exploded into being as soon as the strange insect was close enough to be caught in the blast.

Thundershade was weird. It looked like black lightning, but somehow two dimensional. It was also completely silent, and yet Will could feel it in his bones, as if it was extremely loud, but below the audible range.

As strange as the aspect was, the skill was more than enough to knock the monster back and stop, at least temporarily, its shriek.

The monster stumbled about, blinded by the skill. Unfortunately, Will couldn’t capitalize on its weakness. By the time Will managed to get back to his feet, the monster had also recovered, and was starting to shriek again.

Will, however, was already charging, and the monster was slowed just enough that Will hit it before it could start its attack. The impacting wombat drove the air out of the insect’s…

Will had no idea. Insects didn’t actually have lungs, as far as he knew. But insects also weren’t the size of an adult wombat, usually.

Besides, it didn’t matter what exactly the air was driven out of. What mattered was that the air was driven out and the shriek never manifested.

Will started clawing at the monster, and was quickly joined by his Light Mandrill. The monster whipped Will with its antennae, but as far as Will could tell there was far too little force in the attack to actually hurt him, even if he hadn’t been wearing armor.

It was only after the monster was dead that he noticed lines of rust crossing his armor wherever the feathery tips had touched.

Black Metal Devourer slain!

Gained 10 XP

Black like his diabolical heart!

Which he doesn’t even have!

Cause, you know, insects.

What does that description even mean? This making even less sense than those Vole-Vs, and I still don’t know what those were even supposed to be! Do they eat metal? Is that why it caused my armor to rust?

But why call it black? The only black parts about this thing were the circles around its eyes and antennae!

Whatever. Not like I’m going to get an answer here. At least I know why Kevin is having such a hard time getting metal shipments. These things are eating it.

Will’s Harvester skill extracted something called “Metal Devourer Chitin” from the dead monster. It also lit up the wall that the Devourer was scratching at, so Will used it again and got a lump of iron ore for his trouble.

I guess my armor smelled like a more convenient meal than the buried iron? Wait. Aren’t the torch sconces made out of metal? Why didn’t this thing try to eat those instead?

As usual, no answer came. The room had another tunnel leading out of it, which Will took once his stamina was back at max.

The next room had another of the insectile Metal Devourers. This one, however, was smaller and slicker than the first one. It also lacked the white face and black circles, being uniformly reddish brown all over.

And it was fast.

Will barely had time to see it sniffing before the thing blurred and smashed into him. And while the Devourer’s antennae weren’t doing any damage to Will himself, the monster’s front claws were definitely strong enough to scratch him.

And before Will could even think about retaliating, the monster was gone, too fast for Will to hit.

Once again, there was no aiming at the monster. There was barely even seeing the monster. Will even tried to time a Burst for when it struck, but after the third miss he had to admit that he just wasn’t quick enough.

Eventually, Will ended up throwing his new lump of iron ore as bait for the monster. Surprisingly, it worked, and the monster stopped pinballing Will in favor of standing in front of the lump of ore and poking at it with its antennae.

Which was all the opportunity Will needed to charge at it and knock it down. And for all the thing’s speed, it needed to be on its feet to actually use it.

Speed Metal Devourer slain!

Gained 10 XP

Fast like the beat of his heart!

Which he doesn’t even have!

Cause, you know, insects.

Oh, come on now! You’re not even trying with this description! At least the moles and voles were all different!

The lump of iron ore Will used as bait had been reduced to a pile of rust, but Will got another one from one of the walls. He still got some profit out of the fight, however, since the monster itself yielded another piece of Metal Devourer Chitin.

The next room had a Crankscout in it. The clockwork monster was actually more dangerous to Will himself than the Metal Devourers were, since its antennae were sharp enough to serve as swords. But it didn’t have any special ability like the real Devourers, so there wasn’t much of a challenge to the fight.

That room was a dead end, and Will had to retrace his steps back to the entrance room and pick another direction to go down.