29
Attack
It didn’t take long to confirm Geoff's theory. We all went back out into the rockfall room to find another troll, just standing there. We cleaned up our attack a little but still lost more than we gained. The moment the troll died, another rushed in to take its place. Another problem was becoming apparent as well. The time between killing the one troll and being forced into another invasion was not enough to convert the bodies to coins.
After the third troll, I managed to time the construction interface correctly and stop time. That allowed me to remove the bodies, but that cost more money. I was able to use the frozen time to take a look outside as well. Just outside of our clearing stood an army of trolls. Within the yard was only one troll, the one who was to invade next.
“How long can we keep this up?” I asked.
After considering for a moment, Lilith answered. “A fair number of times, we might be able to bring the cost down as well… Maybe we can set up a trap at the door. But... I worry... why are they going for this strategy instead of a full assault?”
That was a good question. With the numbers they had outside, they could brute force their way through all the traps. Hell, if Ezekiel invaded, he could probably survive all the traps. Then another question struck me.
“Why don't they know how weak we are? The trolls have invaded a few times; they should know about the rock trap, and they should know that one troll can take several of us all at once… We shouldn't even be a speed bump to them.”
Rather than answer, Lilith added another question to the list. “Why is the avatar a fox when the whole dungeon is trolls?”
“Let's bring in some more heads… They don’t seem to be in a hurry to attack, just block us from doing anything.”
I took a bit of a gamble on my way out of the construction mode. My body was in the boss room alone, but I was still down a leg. So I made a giant rock over my head that would fall as soon as time started. The gamble paid off, and I managed to die before the invasion started. I respawned in my bed and immediately teleported back to the boss room. Once everyone gathered in the bunk room, Lilith and I explained the situation as much as we could.
I sat heavily when we finished. “So… any ideas?”
Everyone was quiet for a long moment.
“Can we rush them?” Geoff asked.
I shook my head; Lilith answered. “YOU can, but Rob and I can't risk it. Plus... there are too many... If you tried it, you would be killed before you could do anything.”
Gale offered her suggestion next, “Can we wait them out?”
“Hmm, maybe… But what does waiting them out look like? The humans from the capital are here to kill the demons; when they find out Derrick was here, then we become a group of convenient targets.” I said.
Tessa grunted unhappily, “Then… what is the best-case scenario for us? Do we need to get rid of the trolls and the humans both?”
Gabriel, who had been worryingly quiet for days now, spoke up, “There are a lot of trolls out there, right? So… Who is defending their dungeon?”
When no one had an answer, he continued, “We sneak out… I know the way; I can lead us there. We destroy their dungeon and then have the squirrel and Derrick lead the humans away… We could even blame the troll dungeon for the demons being here in the first place.”
We all looked around at each other, but no one offered another idea.
I took a deep breath and nodded, “So… Who's going?”
We had a disturbingly low wave level limit. As things stood, we could only field twelve levels at one time. Gabriel demanded to go, and Gabrielle wasn't going to leave him to go alone, so that left only six more levels.
Lilith had the same idea I did. “Rob should go; he's a decent fighter, and I can keep in contact with him while leading the defense.”
With that decided, we came to another problem.
“How do we get out without them seeing us?” Gabrielle asked.
“Exhume." Geoff said simply.
I almost laughed; that would work perfectly. It was almost as if the system planned this. Almost too convenient. The three of us gathered as far away from the entrance as we could get, and I used the ability on myself. I hadn't tested it on myself, but it seemed to work just fine. One moment I was looking at Gabe and Gabby in the flickering torchlight of the dungeon, and the next I stood in the broken moonlight of the clearing. With a quick look around, I confirmed none of the attackers were looking. They all stood staring blankly into space. I used the ability twice more to bring the other two out of the dungeon.
Climbing the fence that I had specifically built to be difficult to climb without drawing attention was a tense few minutes, but Gabriel was able to handle the barbs without much trouble and talked me through it as well. Once Gabrielle landed next to us, we were out and quickly away into the woods.
Dungeon Minions and Dungeon Boss detected leaving area of influence
Dungeon wave event started
Maximum cumulative level of minions in dungeon wave: 12
Cumulative level of minions in wave: 12
WARNING: Invasion in progress, Dungeon avatar has been granted full authority over the dungeon. If the Dungeon Boss falls while an invasion is in progress they will not respawn until invasion is defeated.
Aha, that was something I wish I had known before. Though it didn't change the fact that we needed to handle this, and this was the best way to do that. We quietly followed Gabriel's lead through the trees. The goblin was quiet and intense looking, but I caught a glimpse of a grin on his face. Hopefully he could remain calm when the fighting started, but I didn't have high hopes for that. The hike through the forest was over in a worryingly short amount of time. I knew they were close, but we didn’t take twenty minutes to get there.
The dungeon was obvious from a distance, probably due to more tier requirements than we had yet to see. A large hill rose a dozen feet up; that was already strange since the forest was relatively flat. In the side of the hill was a massive stone entryway with several torches and braziers burning with blue light. From the top of the hill rose a tower of stone well over the tops of the trees. It made me wonder how the humans had missed this dungeon but somehow found ours.
We were on a bit of a clock, though, so we couldn't linger and gawk. The three of us ran to the dungeon but drew up short when we saw our target standing just inside. Kasumi, the troll girl, stood with arms crossed in the dungeon. When she noticed us, she jumped and started loudly talking to her crown in the troll language.
Lilith translated. “They're here; I thought you said they were all inside!”
After a pause, presumably listening to Ezekiel’s response, she continued, “Well, you missed three of them. There's no time. Press the attack, end this now.”
Then she looked up and spoke directly to us, “Good of you to visit. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Gabriel charged. “Don't listen to what she says; hurry!”
I was in agreement; it sounded like she was trying to buy time for Ezekiel to attack our people. We ignored the troll and ran into the dungeon. It was the first time I saw an invasion start from the other side. One moment the short troll was standing in front of us, lit by the moonlight. The next she was gone, and the door slammed behind us, and the room went mostly dark.
You have entered a dungeon.
Dungeon Tier: 8
Recommended level: 50
ERROR: Many of the dungeon monsters are away on a wave event
ERROR: Many of the dungeon monsters are under-leveled for the tier
Adjusting Level recommendation…
Recommended level: 20
The inside of the dungeon looked a lot like our own with the dark stone walls and flickering torchlight. Gabe didn't wait for us to get our bearings, quickly striding forward into the empty room.
I grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. “Wait, where are you going?”
He whirled around and knocked my hand away. “To pay her back, I know the way; I’ve been here before, remember?”
“Just wait a minute. What if there are traps? What about trolls? Can you fight them by yourself?”
“There aren't any traps. If I have to fight them alone, I will. I hoped you would join me.”
I shook my head. “Of course there are traps. This dungeon is tier eight; one of the tier requirements is trap kills.”
Gabrielle stepped between us, “Just slow down; we can do this together, but we can't rush.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
He didn't seem to like it, but Gabe walked more slowly, examining the floor as we moved into the dungeon. I made my way over to a torch mounted on the wall. After a bit of doing, I was able to pry it free of the bracket holding it. Now we had a light and a source of fire. We should be able to do this. The moment I thought that, a click echoed through the room. Gabrielle stumbled backward quickly. Several wooden spikes jutted out of the floor and ceiling where she had stood a moment before. We… MIGHT be able to do this…
*****
Back at the dungeon...
Not long after Rob and the scout siblings left, a resounding crash sounded throughout the dungeon.
“What was that?” Tessa asked worriedly.
“The rock trap.” Gale and Lilith answered together.
The invasion results window appeared in front of the dungeon avatar, but she ignored it, quickly using the construction time freeze to reset the trap.
“Why did it go off now? I thought they were just trying to keep us locked up in here.” The troll zombie asked.
Lilith smiled bitterly. “That was before… Looks like the others made it to their dungeon, and now they are trying to rush the attack.”
As if to confirm her statement, another invasion started; this time there were twenty invaders.
Lilith whistled, “Well… get ready… this is the real one, everyone.”
And so it was. Ezekiel had entered the dungeon as part of the invasion force, and while he could probably have used his level to shrug off most of the traps, if he did fall, then that would be it. So he stayed at the rear, directing the trolls forward one at a time to probe the defenses. In the very first room, the rock fall splattered one troll beyond regeneration. After seeing the scale of the trap, they decided to stay at least an entire room back from the lead troll. The second room was still the stairwell leading down deeper into the dungeon. The troll stepped on the LEGO and, even though they seemed to be able to ignore pain when in the mindless drone state like this, it winced. No trolls died to the LEGO trap, though. When Lilith reported that fact to the gathered minions, Gale got a frustrated look on her face.
“They'll be here too quickly; too many of the traps are going to fail.” Gale said, sounding like the admission pained her. “We can't let them go unchallenged; we need to harass them.”
“How?” Gary asked.
After considering a moment, Gale answered. “We use the boss door... We come up behind them and attack from a distance. Push them all into the same room at the same time.”
Everyone was quiet for a long minute. Eventually Lilith nodded, looking serious. “It's a good idea… but we can't afford to lose anyone… We have to be careful and move quickly.”
With their plan decided, the group picked a few of the quickest among them so they could retreat in a hurry. Gale, Lawrence, and Gary quietly crept out into the rockfall room. Their plan to be quiet and sneaky ended immediately as Gale let out a surprised squawk. The other two spun to see her frantically patting at her coat as if trying to put out a fire.
“What are you doing?” Gary hissed.
“Sebastian… look!”
Gale produced the red glowing egg from her pocket. The egg that had been pulsing red in a slow rhythm before was now glowing brightly and shaking.
“What's it doing?”
“I don't…”
Gale didn't finish. The egg floated out of her hands, slowly moved to the center of the room, and hovered there. The red glow suddenly snapped off, and the room suddenly got much darker. The blood from the troll that had died to the trap rose up from the floor and rushed toward the egg in thin ribbons. The ribbons of blood swirled around the egg faster and faster until it looked like a red sphere in the middle of the room. With an earsplitting caw, Sebastian flew out of the sphere. The ball of blood pulled along with the bird for a moment before snapping back. The egg absorbed the rebounding blood and fell to the floor, once again silver and unmoving.
Gale shrieked. “Sebastian!”
The bird flew to the goblin and perched in its usual spot on her shoulder. Before any of them could question what had happened, they heard an angry roar from Ezekiel.
“WHO?!?!”
Gale snatched up the egg, and the group rushed back into the bunk room, locking the door behind them.
“What happened?” Lilith asked.
“Um… Well, we lured them back. So that should have slowed them down a bit.” Gale said guiltily.
*****
At the invasion party…
We made our way through the rooms slowly. Each room had some sort of trap, but not all of them were meant to kill. Somehow they had managed to create some puzzles and moving rooms. I had a few ideas on how to recreate some of them, but at the moment it meant we had slowed to a crawl. Gabriel was quickly running out of patience, and Gabrielle had to calm him down to stop him from running off and getting himself killed several times.
The one positive point was that we didn't run into any trolls. Gabby was happy about that fact, but Gabe only complained he couldn’t fight something. I was secretly worried they were gathering like we did. If we ran into a room with a dozen trolls in it, we were screwed. We made our way through dozens of rooms. Several times we got turned around and had to backtrack. Eventually, though, we came to a door with a lock on it.
Gabby looked at the door in confusion. “Did we get a key somewhere?”
“No, no, we did not.” Gabe growled.
I frowned. “Well… we need to go back and find it, I guess…”
Gabe exploded, “We don't have time for this! We need to get in there NOW!!!”
He started pounding on the door in frustration. He soon stopped when we heard laughing from the other side.
“Stupid goblins. All this time and you still haven’t figured it out? Oh well, by this time Ezekiel will be finishing off your friends. You are done.”
Gabriel lost it. He charged madly at the door and started kicking and screaming at it. Gabby and I tried to calm him down, but there was no talking to him. The more he kicked and punched the door, the louder the mocking laughter grew. Somehow the laughter was too loud. Like it came from inside my own head.
There was something off. Dungeons had to be possible. When I made the lock on the bunk room, I had to make a key for it. That seemed to be what was going on here… but we had been turned around so many times it didn't feel like we could have missed something so important. And… why weren’t there any trolls here? We hadn't seen any trolls the entire time, just traps, puzzles, and empty rooms.
I yelled over Gabriel's incomprehensible screams. “KASUMI?”
The laughter stopped suddenly. Gabe noticed and stopped as well.
“Kasumi… that's your name, right? Not Tina.”
“How do you know that name?”
“Monsters all have names that start with the same letter as their race… You are no troll, Kasumi.”
“Of course I am... what else would I be?”
“When Lilith got her own body, it was an elf like me… Ezekiel is a fox man… I've never managed to identify one… but I remember... fox monsters... Kasumi… Are you a kitsune?”
She didn't answer.
I continued on, now confident in my reasoning. “Right… so, one of the things I remember about kitsune is that they have illusion and mind magic… What we see isn't necessarily what is really...”
Before I could finish the thought, a powerful blow from something I couldn't see struck me in the side. It hurt and knocked me to the ground, but Kasumi was something like level sixteen. If I was right, then her level was inflated, and she wasn't nearly as strong as we thought. It was like when the level one Jackalope nearly killed us all. Level wasn't as important as it seemed.
Gabe and Gabby were slow to react. They had been listening to the exchange, but they didn't have their own translation effects, so they could only follow my half, and it was possible they had never heard of a kitsune before.
“Help, She's here, and she's invisible, but she’s weaker than we thought, and she's alone.”
I wasn't sure if that last part was true, but the fact that I hadn't been splattered suggested she didn't have a troll backing her up. The siblings rushed to my side and readied their weapons, but the room was silent once again.
“Gabby, stand in the door. She's in here somewhere; don't let her out.”
The goblin hurried to comply, shutting the thick wooden door and standing in front of it like a guard, effectively cutting off the only exit from the room. The doors were strange; all the rooms had them, but they were all open for some reason. I shook off the wayward thoughts as the dungeon boss made herself known again.
Kasumi spoke again, “So what? You figured it out? Who cares? Ezekiel is crushing your friends right now; it's only a matter of time before he kills the dungeon and you die with it. You'll never find me. Why don't you start begging for forgiveness while you still can?”
The voice again came from everywhere at once. Gabriel swept his spear in great arcs through the room, and I did the same with the torch I was still carrying. The room was small, but not small enough that we could keep an invisible enemy from slipping between us whenever we got too close. Was there really no way to catch her?
Kasumi coughed in the smoke from the torch.
*****
At the defense…
Ezekiel had followed the sounds of the group back to the boss door and stood quietly there for a short while. It seemed like he was waiting for someone to come back out again, but they had a small peephole, and none of the minions fell for the trap. The defenders spoke in hushed whispers, trying to decide what to do.
“Should we let him in and hope the log trap gets him?” Gina asked.
Lilith shook her head. “No, I don't think any of the traps would get someone that strong, and we would just be letting him in.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We wait... They came in because they were in a hurry. They're worried the other group will succeed.”
“So… we just sit here?”
Lilith was about to nod, but a loud crash interrupted them. Gale quickly ran to the peephole and just as quickly backed up.
“We… don't have much of a choice anymore… They're breaking the door down… get ready.”
Lilith grimaced and sent her voice through the crown to Rob. “We are running out of time... hurry up.”
Without waiting for a response, she took her place at the back of the group. Everyone raised their weapons, and another thundering blow shook the door. The next blow shattered the door, and trolls started to elbow each other to get inside first. The log trap released and struck the first troll in the chest, sending it back into the others. The next was in the door before the first hit the ground.
Chaos followed.
Gale fired several crossbows she had been working on. The bolts were designed to wedge into bone and stick there, hopefully slowing movement. Tessa acted as a living wall, throwing herself at the front of the charging trolls. Handy and Lawrence came in from the sides, biting and stabbing. Several goblins used spears to stab through any gaps.
None of it mattered. The first trolls fell quickly enough, but the next ones pressed the line back. Quickly the first ones to fall were back on their feet and pushing forward again. It was all happening so quickly. Before long one of the defenders fell back with a busted shoulder. Then another limped away.
They weren’t going to last another ten minutes like this.
*****
At the invasion…
Rob and Gabriel’s attention snapped to the source of the coughing. This sound had a source, unlike the strange echoing speech from before. They lunged at the source, weapons leading the way but hit nothing. They had crossed the entire room, and that was the only sign of the enemy, and they had missed it.
“DAMNIT!” Gabriel shouted.
“Hush!” Gabrielle hissed from her spot guarding the door.
We started our way back to her with great sweeping arcs of our weapons again but were interrupted when Lilith spoke through the crown.
“We are running out of time... hurry up.”
I shook my head in frustration. Oh, thanks. I was taking a nap before, but now that you’ve told me to hurry, I’ll just go ahead and kill this invisible enemy. I almost said it aloud, but sarcasm wouldn't help anyone right now. I led with the torch, hoping to spread the smoke as much as possible. The smoke was probably the reason the doors were all open down here. With torches being the only source of light, smoke was a real issue. But we didn't need to breathe, so it would be a weapon for us.
We stayed as evenly spaced as we could, weaving back and forth, trying to make sure there were no openings to slip past us again. We were about halfway across the room when it happened.
I heard a wheezing like someone trying to hold in a cough. I looked away from the source, toward Gabby instead. She had her eyes closed until that moment, and they snapped open when she heard the sound as well. I tilted my head slightly, and she nodded in confirmation.
On my next sweep I threw the torch at the sound and pulled my sword. The torch struck home and lit whatever clothes the Kitsune was wearing on fire. The illusion held, but the flames played havoc with the magic, sending distorted shadows and flares of light in every direction. Gabby launched herself at the distortions and struck something. The next instant she was flung away and into a wall. Gabriel was already swinging his spear at the now-screaming monster but missed when the illusion flared out with a flash before dissipating. Finally we could see Kasumi as she truly was.
The kitsune was the same height and size as her Tine persona, probably intentionally so. She looked just like an overlarge fox with three physical tails, all of which were smoldering. Rather than walking on two legs, she was on all fours and snarling at us.
The three of us regrouped in the middle of the room and spread out. With Kasumi now visible, we no longer needed a door guard. The added person gave us the coverage we needed, and there were no longer any gaps in our wall. We advanced on the kitsune, and she retreated into a corner.
“Ezekiel, end it! END IT NOW!”
I started to feel bad, but Lilith broke me out of that spiral immediately.
“ROB, We have no time left; if you have anything up your sleeve, use it now. Hurry, hurry, hur...
I pounced on the fox; Gabe and Gabby did the same. With nowhere to run, the kitsune tried to go through me. As it happens I DID have one last trick up my sleeve. I kicked the ground, pulling up short. When her target wasn't where she expected it the fox’s own jump fell short and she stumbled. I dropped my sword and grabbed her. She bit my arm which immediately snapped in her powerful jaws. I had a solid grip with my other arm as well though and bit her back.
Her eyes went wide and she froze up. I ripped her throat out.