As Will had expected, the exit from the mines led directly to Kevin’s Smithy. It was, in fact, the same door he’d entered from when he’d left the crypt. Which made about as much sense as everything else on the Board, as far as Will was concerned.

“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, Will.” The smith was sitting morosely at one corner of his smithy. Will noticed that the forge was cold and unlit. “Not sure if I can actually help you with anything this time though. I’m officially out of iron.”

Kevin took a closer look at the wombat. “I might be able to help you with those nasty patches of rust on your armor, but you really should maintain it in a better condition.”

Hey, Kevin. I think I’ve just solved your iron problem, actually.

“Really?” the smith’s eyes brightened. Every pair of eyes of every racoon. At least, the ones Will could see peeking out of the apron’s sleeves. He assumed that the rest were also in on it, but there was no way to be sure.

Yeah. It’s why my armor is in such a bad state. There were Metal Devourers in the mine, and they did a number on my gear.”

“Nasty critters, Metal Devourers. And they’re stronger the more metal you have on you. Why didn’t you just stash your armor somewhere and fight them without it? Nobody goes to fight those things wearing plate!”

Yeah, well. It’s not like I have a manual on how things work here, you know! I guess it does explain why the dungeon was considered easy though. I was going through on hard mode.”

“More like nightmare mode, really. But hey! You got through them, right?”

Yeah. It wasn’t fun, but I got through, and the mines should be clear now, so you should start getting more iron now.

“I appreciate that, Will. Can’t give you any reward for it, unfortunately. There wasn’t a quest. Them’s the rules. But I can fix your armor for you! And next time you come around, I’ll have better gear for you to buy!”

Thanks, Kevin. And the dungeon was worth doing even without an extra reward.

It took about half an hour, and Will had no idea just how Kevin was able to turn the rust back into steel, but when the wombat left the smithy, his armor was gleaming brightly, good as new.

***

image [https://i.imgur.com/P7zfHbY.jpeg]

Volcano Slopes

Deep in the Land of Fire lies the great volcano. Those hardy enough to approach it will find tribes of lizard- and wyrmkin who worship the great dragons rumored to live on top.

Space rank: 2

Rank 1 enemies may now appear

Rank 0 elites may now appear.

Enemies will now appear in larger groups.

Getting back to the volcano was strange. Will could still feel the heat. It hadn’t lessened even the tinniest little bit. But it just didn’t bother him. He was perfectly comfortable, despite what should have been an oppressive and dangerous temperature.

Yeah, I can definitely say that Resistance was a good skill. This is going to be incredibly easier now.

Main quest

Disrupt the wards hiding the Wyrmkin shrine

Reward:

Space rank-up

300 XP

1 mastery shard

Huh. Another new one. No idea how one goes about disrupting wards, but I’m pretty sure it’ll become clear at some point. And it’s the third quest again, so Mr. Grumpy Roo has been here at some point. Oh well. I think an aspect would have been more immediately useful, but according to Bob, master shards are harder to find.

Fighting on the volcano slopes without having to conserve mana to heal the environmental damage was an entirely different affair. Will could actually afford to use his offensive skills. And without the negative XP penalty from dying, his skills were all at their actual level, instead of reduced to level one.

Which was a very welcome change, since the Lizardkin weren’t walking around alone any more.

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The first group of Lizardkin Will found had two of the familiar spear bearing Lizardkin Will had fought the last time he’d been on the slopes. Leading them was a bigger Lizardkin wearing crude leather armor and carrying a longbow.

As soon as they caught sight of Will, the two spear carriers charged at him, leaving the archer behind to draw his bow.

Will and his newly resummoned simian minion started their own charge, but it was obvious to Will that they’d meet the melee enemies while the archer was beyond the range of Will’s Mage skill. With Will’s Unstoppable Lance Charge, however, the spear bearers couldn’t actually stop his charge.

The wombat charged one of the Lizardkin, knocking it down and trampling over it without slowing down. The Mandrill met the other spearzard. And while it was hit by the spear before it could close in to strike its target, the monkey wasn’t bothered by the hit, and proceeded to bash its target with Power Attacks.

The archer, meanwhile, was shooting rapidly at Will. Which worked out well for the first couple of arrows, which hit Will’s armor, and even managed to do some damage. As soon as Will had knocked down the first Lizardkin, however, things changed.

The archer, who was now the official target of Will’s charge, was now subject to the Fumble effect. The third arrow missed Will completely. The slowed down archer couldn’t aim properly at the running wombat. The fourth never actually came. It fell from the archer’s hand when the Lizardkin was trying to nock it. And when the archer tried to draw another one from his quiver, all of the arrows spilled out on the ground instead.

And then Will was there, and the Lizardkin itself was knocked down on the ground, and subjected to a thorough clawing.

By that point, the fight was just about finished. The first knocked down spear lizard did manage to get back up before Will was done with the archer, and did manage to strike the Light Beast again, but Will was able to get close enough to finish it off with a Thundershade Volley before it could do much more.

The archer was worth twenty XP, which marked it as either a tier one enemy or an elite. Harvesting it still yielded just the standard pile of red reptiles scales.

Nothing here to tell me anything about the wards or how to disrupt them. Moving on, I guess?

The next two groups of Lizardkin were almost exactly the same. One of them had a Crankscout instead of a regular spearzard, but that’s about it. And neither group had anything related to Will’s quest.

The first break came soon after Will had dispatched the third group. A small flat area had been hacked from the side of the mountain. It couldn’t possibly have been larger than fifty square meters, and more or less circular.

The flat area itself was empty. But surrounding it was the largest group of Lizardkin Will had seen so far.

There were six of the regular spear bearing Lizardkin, three archers, and one Lizardkin which was even bigger than the archers, and wearing a fancy looking robe made of heavy red fabric and a pointed red hat.

With this many enemies, Will had to go all out on his skill usage. As far as Will could see, a standard spear carrying Lizardkin had fifty health. Which mean it took five Bolts to kill them. Or three Balls, which were equivalent to three seconds of a Cone.

Which meant that unless he could catch at least three of them with a Cone skill, his best mana to damage ratio would be using the Volley form of his Mage skill. Volley, however, had less than half the range of a standard Ball or Bolt skill.

Therefore, Will’s tactic, such as it was, was to charge straight into the group of ten Lizardkin. Accompanied by his trusty minion, of course.

As Will had more or less expected, the spearzards charged right back at them, while the archers started shooting. What he hadn’t quite expected was for the fancy looking Lizardkin to cast a spell that made every weapon carried by a lizardkin to burst into flames.

Will knew that his Passive Defense skill would at least mitigate the fire damage. But there’s a difference between knowing that the burning spear wall wasn’t that dangerous to him and actually charging into said burning spear wall.

Without even consciously decided to do it, Will stopped his charge well short of the spear bearers. He was, however, within Volley range of them. Five bolts shot at one of the spearzards, instantly killing it. The sixth bolt hit a different target. It wasn’t enough to do more than wound the target, but Will’s luck was on his side, and the stun effect of his Thundershade aspect activated.

The four unharmed spearzards kept charging at Will, preceded by a trio of flaming arrows from the archers. Will’s Light Beast intercepted one of the spearzards, and Will figured it would be able to win, even with the burning spear enhancing the Lizardkin’s damage.

He, himself, had to either dodge or tank the flaming arrows, and then deal with the remaining spearzards.

Dodging arrows wasn’t something Will was confident in doing, but he didn’t want to use his Shield skill, since he wanted to use the mana offensively. So dodging the arrows it was.

Or, well, dodging an arrow, at least. Since dodging one of the three was the best that Will could accomplish. Agile, after all, he was not.

Two arrows hit Will’s armored body, and Will could barely feel them. The impact hurt, a little. But he didn’t even feel the fire, and none of the arrows penetrated his plate armor.

Another Thundershade Volley killed one more spearzard, leaving the extra bolt for the already wounded target.

Two spearzards managed to reach Will, and getting hit by their spears was a lot more painful than getting his by the arrows.

Will had no idea if the fancyzard’s spell was stronger on the spears than it was on the arrows, or if the spearheads were just bigger and therefore hotter, but he could actually feel the flaming weapons burning him when they hit.

Will used Thundershade Burst to knock the Lizardkin away from him. More out of luck than out of any plan of his, the two were flung back at the monster he’d hit with two bolts earlier, which meant that for the first time in the fight, he had three targets close enough to hit with a Cone.

Holding the Cone in place long enough to kill the three spearzards meant that Will himself got hit by more arrows, but that was a trade Will was perfectly willing to make.

The last living spearzard was still busy with Will’s Mandrill, and Will himself was now free to go after the archers and the fancyzard

Charging at the archers meant being hit with two more arrows. The third missed, because the archer firing it was slowed by Will’s charge. It also meant being hit by a fireball, since the fancyzard wasn’t content to just support its allies any more.

Or maybe it was simply that Will was in range now.

Either way, the fireball was a far more serious attack than the spears and arrows have been. Mostly because Will’s armor barely had any effect on magic damage.

The wombat continued his charge, knocking down one of the archers. It wasn’t enough to kill the Lizardkin, but Will didn’t have time to stay and finish it.

The fancy Lizardkin was obviously the most dangerous enemy, and Will sent a Thundershade Volley at it. The bolts were blocked by a shield skill, but the spell caster was, at least, too busy to cast another fireball.

Which meant that Will could charge at it. The monster’s shield was still up, but while it was strong enough to stop the Bolts, it wasn’t close to enough to completely block a charging horned wombat.

Charging through the shield was painful. The Lizardkin must have invested quite a bit into its Fire aspect, and Will’s armor did very little to prevent it from preparing a few servings of roasted wombat.

It was still worse for the Lizardkin. The caster was run through by Will’s nose horn, knocked down to the ground, and then savaged by reinforced claws.

With the mage and spearzards out of the picture, the archers didn’t put up much of a fight. Somewhat battered and more scorched than he’d ever wanted to be, a victorious Will was free to actually look at the flat area the Lizardkin were guarding.

A flat area that was filled with an intricately carved geometric design which Will couldn’t even begin to understand.