The Festering Den (Grade F Delve)
---FLOOR 1---
Enemy Appraised: Grumlets {LVL 10} x15
HP: 50/50
WILL: 50/50
I’ve seen butt-ugly before… but these guys take the cake.
The tiny, foul-smelling goblinoids rushed Ethan’s party with their spears and shortswords held aloft, screaming a battle cry from their frog-like mouths. As they got closer, Ethan was surprised just how accurate the comparison really was: their bulging, bloated eyeballs were an exact picture of a horny toad’s.
“Here they come!”
Tara reeled back, purring just like a kitten ready to play with her prey.
“This’ll be fun…”
Without warning, the Minxit charged forward and slashed through two of the swamp- and slime-covered Grumlets, taking their heads clean off in one blink of Ethan’s raven eyes. For his part, Ethan grabbed one with his new steel claws and took to the blackened skies above, throwing the little guy down like a bowling ball into a mass of his friends who were charging Fauna.
“Death from above just like before, Fauna!” Tara shouted over her shoulder, her face glistening with the green blood of the dead beasts. “How’s it feel having a guardian angel, Faun?”
The Hopla spared a look of resigned thanks up to Ethan and, blushing, cast a firebolt that ripped clean through a row of three Grumlets who had just risen to resume their charge toward her.
Not bad at all, Ethan had to admit. When she gets a spell right, she’s one impressive rabbit…
He swooped down to deliver a [Dive] that tore into the flesh of another corrupted Grumlet, sending out a shockwave of swamp water that poured over its friends—who were then taken down one by one by a flurry of hasty punches and jabs delivered by Klax.
Congratulations! You have just slain a Grumlet {LVL 10}
Spirit Cores +20
Congratulations! You have just slain a Grumlet! {LVL 10}
Spirit Cores +20
Congratulations! You have just slain a—
Can you can it with the notifications!? Ethan barked as he snapped and clawed at more of the froggy menaces around him. Just… give me a total when this shit’s good and done!
System Combat Log Preferences: Updated.
Next time, a ‘please’ would be nice.
“Forward!” Klax suddenly shouted. “There must be a way down to the next floor!”
“Floor?” Ethan asked aloud as he pecked the eyes out of a screaming Grumlet warrior. “You mean this is part of the dungeon itself?”
“Just take a look at the skies, Archon!” Tara shouted. “Can’t your eyes see through an illusion?”
Ethan took flight again to try and understand what she meant. He found that he could only get about 80 feet up in the air before he hit a wall. Literally. There was some kind of boundary wrapped around this whole dark, swampy environment.
So, these Delves really are like instances… Ethan thought.
Somehow, your earthling mind is able to comprehend these nuances of our world surprisingly well.
It’s almost as if I was chosen or something. Huh?
That information is considered [CLASSIFI—]
I get it, he interrupted as he activated his [Hide] skill and came swooping in from the dark, infected clouds above the Grumlet horde. He sent a whole pack of them flying back like ugly little children.
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Then he felt something stirring beneath his feet.
“Uh… guys?” Fauna murmured from behind him. “I think we’ve got some company—ah!”
The Hopla had spotted the danger before the rest of them—her feet could detect gyrations in the earth far better than any of them. And before she could even tell them they had to run like hell right now, Ethan had already scooped her and the rest of the team up in his claws.
The swampland was disappearing into a whirlpool of dirt and grime before their eyes, the Grumlets who were still alive beginning to toss their javelins up at Ethan as he brought the hybrids out of the danger zone.
He felt the stings of their weapons as he tried to hold the weight of the three hybrids, realizing only now how much of a detriment the relatively low strength score of this giant Dark Raven host was.
STR: 10
Status: Fatigued!
Apparently, his comrades didn’t quite feel him begin to lower as the seconds of the battle drew on.
“Haha!” Tara shouted from around his neck, her thighs slapping against his face. “Feel the wind in your hair, guys!" she shouted. "The SS Archon takes flight tonight!”
“Tara! Can you see the exit portal?”
The voice was Klax’s, who was doing what he could to block the projectiles of the ugly goblinoids who hadn’t vanished into the whirlpool of filth that the swamp had become. Many of their comrades had ridden the wave and fallen into the abyss at its center, while the rest swam happily around the periphery, chucking their javelins into the air with wild abandon.
“Take me in closer!” the Minxit shouted in Ethan’s ear. “I can find us the way below.”
“C… can you move away ever so slightly?” he replied. “Even for a sentient hat possessing a giant bird, this position is ever so slightly uncomfortable.”
The Minxit girl sneered down at him. “Oh? Is the Archon nervous?”
“Stop playing around, Tara!” Fauna pouted up at her. “We—we’re in the middle of a fight.”
She then conjured up a spell that Ethan supposed was meant to be some kind of bubble shield, but ended up summoning a living, breathing liquid serpent that wriggled out of her hands and down into the swirling swamp below.
“Guys… your Archon is starting to lose momentum…”
Ethan felt more projectiles sting his hide and wished nothing more than to dive bomb the hell outta the little shits right now. But he kept his cool. In this new life, he wasn’t just gonna charge into danger blindly. He wasn’t gonna make the same mistakes he made back home…
“There!” Tara shouted suddenly, pointing towards a spire in the distance that had been revealed as the swamp continued to drain. “There’s a doorway there that we can head through—the part covered in reeds!”
Ethan’s eyes focused on the location and found the door—the place that was suddenly all so clear to him.
“How did you do that?”
“Cat’s eyes, my good Ethan,” Tara chuckled. “This girl’s not just good for slitting throats and looking good doing it. My species happens to be the best illusion spotters and trap detectors in all of Argwyll.”
Ethan smirked as he turned in the sky and headed straight for the crumbling spire. Looks like I’ve picked the right allies for dungeon-delving…
He tried activating [Hide] and found that the skill just wouldn’t work—probably something to do with him being fatigued. He could make it, though, but the Grumlets swimming beneath them seemed to know exactly where he was going.
“Look!” Fauna screeched. “They’re trying to break the spire down!”
All of them saw it as soon as the Hopla pointed it out—the horde of uglies had descended on the foundations of the spire and were climbing up it before them. The whole thing looked ancient beyond imagining—it was already pretty much crumbling apart. Their webbed claws were starting to entirely break the thing down.
“Guess they don’t want us going below…”
He could make it to the spire if he had a straight shot—Ethan knew it. But right now… that was one hot LZ.
“Keep flying, Ethan!” Klax shouted up.
“That was the idea! But we’re gonna need some major firepower to clear those froggy bois!”
Klax smiled as he kicked away another javelin aimed squarely at Ethan’s steel underbelly. Only a few had managed to penetrate and puncture the armor so far, but it was enough to interrupt his descent. Ethan couldn’t tell exactly why the old wolf was smiling.
“Fauna,” he then heard the Lycae say. “You know what to do.”
The rabbitgirl clutched Ethan’s steel claw even tighter as they approached the spire, watching the hateful eyes of the Grumlet horde take up firing positions on its ridges and ledges.
“I… you know it might not work.”
“That’s a chance we’ve gotta take.”
“Just like usual!” Tara shouted down. “Go on, Sister! Take those little bastards down!”
The Hopla squirmed, hoping against all hopes that Ethan could finish off the brutish toad-creatures instead of her. She looked up at him with fading hope in her big eyes.
You don’t believe in yourself at all, do you? Ethan’s eyes asked her.
He’d seen eyes like hers before. Eyes that never failed to piss him off every time…
“Fauna!” he shouted down, narrowly avoiding a hail of javelins launched from the horde. “Don’t you remember? I promised you I’d get you a new staff. A staff for a real mage! That’s what you are, right?”
The Hopla grimaced. “N… not a mage. A Wildglance.”
“Like I know what the fuck that is!” Ethan replied as he felt the pain of another flurry of projectiles. “What I do know is that you’ve got more power in those fluffy hands than I’ve ever seen in my whole damn life! I don’t care what you do—just do something super special magic awesome!”
He couldn’t tell whether it was his words or simply the necessity of destroying the enemies blocking their path that spurred the girl on. All he knew was that in the next second, he felt the Hopla girl’s body go limp before she raised her arm and muttered an incantation that set the air itself ablaze.
“P-PYROS ARMUNUM!”
Searing, blistering heat rocketed up from the hand of the rabbitgirl, until the power contained within her spirit could no longer be contained. It gushed forth from her palm like a blooming red flower of death, instantly vaporizing the entire horde and the spire’s midsection along with it.
Ethan watched in awe as the spell reduced the screaming Grumlets to piles of brown ash.
I have really gotta possess me a Wildglance…
“Now, Ethan!” Klax roared.
The demon hat didn’t even need to hear this—already his host was rocketing through the flames towards the purple portal that had just opened at the tip of the spire, and as soon as he touched its surface, the world twisted and folded in on itself, and the screaming party of hybrids was thrust into the unknown horrors of the Festering Den’s second floor.