Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason
Race: Human
Age: 18
DP: 927
Status Effects: None
Common Talents
Strength: Petty
Endurance: Major
Dexterity: Petty
Intelligence: Petty
Willpower: Average
Wisdom: Petty
Charisma: Petty
Personality: Major
Perception: Minor
Stats
Strength: 22
Endurance: 27
Dexterity: 19
Intelligence: 9
Willpower: 25
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 6
Personality: 27
Perception: 16
Talents
Average Rage
Petty Ice Magic
Average Swordsmanship
Monster Talents
Average Troll Regeneration
Minor Tough Hide
Skills
Workout: 8
Study: 4
Spearmanship: 9
Shield: 9
Shield Bash: 4
Use Magic Item: 2
Throwing: 5
Swordsmanship: 4
Magic Skills
Freeze Touch: 3
Freeze Bolt: 3
Freeze Edge: 2
We stepped out in the middle of a goblin camp which was built in the middle of a fort. I had left my spear in the cart, as it was much harder to use with a shield, and was primarily using the sword. Though if I lost the sword I could use one of my javelins as a spear and still make use of my skill.
Seeing us emerge, several goblins called out and things quickly devolved into chaos as their leisure activities had to be discarded in favor of self defense. I let my anger take over and ran at the nearest Hobgoblin and managed to unleash a freezing slash across his chest before he could grab his sword. I then swung at the female one beside him, who barely managed to lift a pole arm of some sort up in time to block it, though I did crack the shaft. With her weapon now all but useless, she rolled out of the way of my next slash, towards the sword the other one hadn’t been able to grab in time, and brought it up to block my next attack.
She swung at me, but it was a sloppy swing that I easily blocked. Apparently she only had skill in her weapon of choice, not in a sword. She only managed to block my swings a few more times before leaving herself open, allowing me to disemboweled her. With these two hobs dead, I ran at a group of gobs. One was a water mage, and the other two had crossbows. I managed to block a water bolt and one crossbow bolt, but another hit me in the side, barely penetrating the leather armor. I guess it wasn’t entirely worthless. I swung my sword as I got there and in my enraged state I took the head of one of the crossbow men and sliced several centimeters deep into the shoulder of the other one, almost severing the arm.
I pulled my sword out of his shoulder and he collapsed on the ground, screaming in pain. If it wasn’t for the water mage firing another water bolt, forcing me to block it, I would have ended the wounded one’s suffering permanently.
The water mage backed out the door, a terrified look on his face as he tried to get away from the demon that just took out two of his friends in one swing. Walking backwards wasn’t easy, however, and when he tripped and dropped his wand, I rushed forward and stabbed him in the throat. I then went back and finished off the one on with a useless arm.
Back outside I noticed that there were only a few more goblins left standing, and all of them were either fleeing out the front gate of the fortress or fighting one of the others. I fired two freeze bolts at two gobs that were still within thirty meters or so, but missed both of them. I considered chasing after them, but since no one else was, I didn’t.
I went back to pick up the gear off of the ones I killed. There wasn’t anything special except the wand, but it would all sell for good money. Still, I gathered the crystals from all of them, threw their gear in a pile near the portal, and started a funeral pile with their corpses. “If anyone wants armor, there’s a male and a female set of Hob leather in the pile over there.” I called out as everyone else joined in on the cleanup.
Millie ended up taking the female Hob armor, even though the Hob had a slightly bigger chest, as she and Martha were the only two women in the group. One of the other adventurers who didn’t have armor took the male armor and Millie healed all of our wounds.
We had closed the gate and barred it, as it was apparently designed for us to do that. This floor of the dungeon appeared to be a battle between two castles, with us having the one near the portal entrance and the goblins protecting another one. “If this dungeon has a second floor, I’m guessing the portal is in their fort.” I said. The others agreed.
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Still, it didn’t make sense for the dungeon to give us a fully functional fort to fight them off. As long as we brought in more people, we could hold the fort indefinitely, making any assault they launched meaningless. If this dungeon had enough gobs and hobs to station them not just in the fort the invaders were supposed to use, but to put fifty of them outside on top of the fifty that had attacked the town two days ago, it was definitely overpopulated.
“Are we going to try and take the fort at the other end of the floor?” I asked. If you had good eyesight you could see it from here, but the ceiling was too low for us to lob arrows at them from inside the fort.
“Eventually,” said Martha. “I just need to come up with a plan. I’ve heard of dungeons that had forts inside of them, but never one that gave the invaders one as well.”
As she tried to come up with another strategy, I went to ask Millie about the wand I found on the goblin. “I think it has some sort of water magic, but I tried connecting to it and it didn’t give me water bolts like the goblin was using.”
She looked the wand over. “That’s because this isn’t a water wand. It’s just a normal wand. It will make any spell you cast through it use 10% less mana. Mine’s a bit better at 15%, but it isn’t bad.” She pulled out her wand to show me its superior quality.
I nodded and took the wand back. “Well, then I’ll start using it when I cast magic.” I tucked it into my shirt pocket and started moving gear outside to the cart. Soon, several of the other adventurers joined me. The cart was almost full after we finished, so Dave suggested that we sort through it if we get any more, to throw out the stuff that wasn’t worth much, and I agreed. I wouldn’t let them throw out any of my stuff, as I was just loaning them the cart, but some of the goblin stuff probably wouldn’t sell for much. The only thing they had on them of immediate value was bits of copper jewelry, or a silver earring one of the higher ranked hobs had. Metals like that could be sold anywhere, while the armor and weapons would most likely need to be melted down for their steel or sold to newbie adventurers. That stuff could be thrown out, or at the very least we could remover the handles from the spears, pole arms, maces, and axes in order to make more room.
Soon after we finished moving all of the gear, Martha told us the plan. We would wait for them to launch an attack, then, after wiping most of them out, we would attack. That would let us get rid of most of their troops before we attacked.
We put watchmen on the wall to check for when the gobs would attack, but when night came they still weren’t here. I had the men doing drills with the goblins training dummies, with Millie healing us enough to relieve their exhaustion, so that they could keep going. She was starting to get a headache, though, so they would need to stop soon so that she could meditate to restore her mana.
I brought in food from my cart and, after cleaning their cookware, used the goblin’s pot to make a big big pot of soup for everyone. There wasn’t much for them to do, but they had at least practiced. I, on the other hand, spent the time swinging my sword and occasionally firing off freeze bolts with my new wand, just in case I needed to attack at range. I managed to hit the target almost every time at thirty meters, so I backed up another five meters and started again.
“This is quite unusual.” said Martha after supper. “The should be trying to chase us out of here. They must want us to stay for some reason.”
“Building up their forces?” asked Barry, helping himself to another bowl of pork stew.
“Probably. But I still don’t get why they gave us a proper fort. A run down one where we would be forced to defend several openings at once, I could see, but there has to be a reason for it, and that reason is probably tied to why they are just letting us stay here.”
“In that case, let’s go over what we know about dungeons, then.” said Millie, wiping up the last of the soup with a bit of bread. “Why do dungeons exist, and why do they let us invade in the first place?”
“From what I heard,” said the swordsman named Paul. “Dungeons are living machines, kind of like golems, that the evil God of Dungeons created to try and sow discord across the world.”
“That would explain why they attacked the town, and even why they occupied the fort outside, but not why they let us in.” said Martha.
“They didn’t let us in, though, we had to fight to get in here.” I said.
“Only because they didn’t have enough forces. If the dungeon fortified the portal, or even had his people on alert in this fort, we wouldn’t have survived entering it, at least not without retreating.”
“I agree.” said Millie. “The dungeon doesn’t have to feed its troops with food, at least not as long as they are inside it. They can survive just off the ambient DP in the air. So if it wanted it could hold thousands of troops in here, giving them only enough to live on, until it is ready to launch a massive army to wipe out the intelligent beings in the area. Instead, it sends fifty to attack us, has fifty defend the outside of the portal, and maybe another fifty in this fort. And I’m willing to bet there are either fifty or a hundred in that fort.” she motioned towards the other side of the dungeon. “Two hundred and fifty troops, one hundred of which you have to make food for, is no where near what it’s capable of. And the fact that we are using bowls, spoons, and a pot that the goblins had means that they were eating food too. Then there’s the fact that about half of the troops here were female. That sounds more like a colony than an army.” Sure, the women knew how to fight, but gobs were almost entirely melee fighters, and unlike humans with only a small difference, their men were far stronger than their women, so if you were building an army, you would only recruit men.
“Where does it get DP?” asked Paul. “Does it mine it? Make it from something else?”
“No one actually knows.” said Millie. “There was a mad priest that claimed that dungeons were the priests of the god that made them, and that DP is his divine power manifest within the dungeons, but not many people thought his theories had much value. Other than that, no one has even come close to an explanation.”
With the conversation reaching a conclusion, everyone broke apart to find a place to sleep. I would probably need a few hours tomorrow but for tonight we could repeat our watch from last night, with the three of them on the wall watching for enemy troops, and me in the courtyard, practicing as I made sure no one came through the portal.
I got in a good nine hours of sword and magic practice, putting a Freeze Edge on my sword as much as possible, only stopping when my headache got too bad. I practiced both two handed swordsmanship and one handed swordsmanship. The watch, however, had nothing to do, as the enemy didn’t do anything at night, not even assaulting at sunrise, as the fake sun of this floor rose behind their fortress and set behind ours.
With no other option, Martha rounded up the troops and, once everyone was ready, we set out for the other side. When we got about a hundred meters away, however, arrows started hitting the ground near us. On top of the walls were fifty archers, all of them firing at us if we crossed into an area where they had cut a firebreak in the grass. There were several more firebreaks, one every twenty meters, as well as a moat around the fort, with the gobs leaving and entering it via a drawbridge.
“This will take a much bigger army to defeat.” said Martha. We tried firing spells and arrows at them from outside their range, but none of them hit, so we had no choice but to leave.
Once we were back in the fort, we closed the drawbridge, gathered up all of the food that was in this fort, and left. There was no point in staying here any longer. Martha did write a letter to the guild master in Verlos for me to deliver, however, and would be telling the Mayor about this as well. This was a most unusual dungeon and, if we had any hope of clearing it, we would need dozens, maybe hundreds, of adventurers, or a team of high level adventurers that were unlikely to make a nice profit fighting here. They might even need to bring in the actual army and occupy the place to prevent another break.
It took us the rest of the day to return to the town, and the sun was about to set when we got there. I dug my tent out of the cart and pitched it fifty meters from the town, where the guards couldn’t say that I was too close. The younger adventures debated whether they were going to camp out here with me, but in the end most of them, other than Paul and Kevin the Mace man, decided to stay in town. My training had meant that they made it all the way back to town with nothing but burning leg muscles, so those two wanted to stay and train some more.
After I offloaded some of the food so that I could make supper, they still helped take the cart into town. I had the stamina to move it myself, but they took turns moving the overweight wagon.
An hour later the two of them returned with my share of the loot. Martha, Barry, Dave and I were the only ones to fight the hobs, so we split the hob crystals, and everyone took an even cut of the gob crystals. They then sold the gear to the local smith for four gold. Apparently, most of it was made of high quality steel that he could melt down, and some of the weapons and armor were good enough that he could directly resale them.
This resulted in my group getting 24 more DP than the others, for a total of 78 each. Kevin then gave me ten of his DP in exchange for the mace, leaving me with a profit of 88 DP and eight silver for this trip. Two and a half days, and I earned more than two weeks worth of what the construction job paid, plus some DP, enough to put me over 1000 DP line I wanted to reach.
That night after supper and splitting the bottle of whiskey Paul brought me we practiced swinging our weapons until after midnight, at which point they climbed into their tents and went to sleep. This close to town no monster would attack us, and I needed to sleep as well, so I climbed into my tent as well.
Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason
Race: Human
Age: 18
DP: 1015
Status Effects: None
Common Talents
Strength: Petty
Endurance: Major
Dexterity: Petty
Intelligence: Petty
Willpower: Average
Wisdom: Petty
Charisma: Petty
Personality: Major
Perception: Minor
Stats
Strength: 23
Endurance: 28
Dexterity: 21
Intelligence: 10
Willpower: 26
Wisdom: 13
Charisma: 7
Personality: 28
Perception: 16
Talents
Average Rage
Petty Ice Magic
Average Swordsmanship
Monster Talents
Average Troll Regeneration
Minor Tough Hide
Skills
Workout: 9
Study: 5
Spearmanship: 9
Shield: 10
Shield Bash: 4
Use Magic Item: 2
Throwing: 5
Swordsmanship: 8
Magic Skills
Freeze Touch: 3
Freeze Bolt: 4
Freeze Edge: 4