The Sunless drones appeared from the black fog, surrounded by a swarm of floating black orbs. The same attack they had launched at Sofia in the first dungeon. A tall rectangular shield appeared in Pareth’s right hand, while Sofia grabbed Bookie and they both hid behind him. The orbs all collided with the shield in a deafening cacophony.
With her mana senses, Sofia counted a total of eight drones.
Easy.
She rapidly invoked the [Spine of the black sun] on her staff while Pareth held the drones back with the help of Bookie’s rats.
The rats fell one after the other under the drones’ strikes which deformed their oily black body to use as weapons, but they bought enough time for Pareth to keep all the Drones away from Sofia. Unable to use both of his hands because of the dungeon’s restrictions, he bashed the drones with his shield and planted it into the ground to use as a support as he kicked the Sunless back into the fog.
The spine fully formed on top of the scepter, Sofia lightly waved it, and used [Bone dominus] to guide the whip straight toward the drone in the middle of the pack, engulfing them all in a solar burst. Just the time to recall the whip and throw it again twice, and the drones fell apart, leaving their usual sunless debris on the dungeon’s floor.
We lost twenty two rats, but no health. Perfect fight.
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 237 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 209 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 221 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 200 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 233 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 236 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 240 - Imprint Intact]’
‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 225 - Imprint Intact]’
It tells me about the imprints? It had stopped for the drones when I got all the drones’ skill shards. Did Everelle really change them to mana?
Looking at the kill notifications, Sofia felt that she kind of missed the skill level up ones which she had disabled for a long time to alleviate the system’s visual clutter that could be distracting during fights.
I can probably reactivate them, it’s been a while.
Too bad the spine is already max level, this could have been a good place to train the skill if the corridors are going to stay narrow like this. Speaking of which… Almost all my skills are done leveling, graveyard is at 248 and skull choir is at 236 but that’s all I have left to work on in the class skills, for the quickly leveling ones at least.
Let’s aim to get the choir to 249 in this dungeon!
While Sofia looked at her notifications and skills, Pareth gathered the debris and brought them to Sofia.
“You could have told the rats to do that, but thanks. Also, nice moves. I guess the dungeon only restricts your left hand, that still leaves three limbs. The shield is nice but what if you need to actually attack? Your usual big swords aren’t really good for one hand, even less in these small corridors.”
Pareth nodded along as he heard Sofia’s opinion. Since his left hand was free, he used it to scratch his chin as he thought about his weapon choice, which Sofia found cute. Eventually, the shield of light changed to a cutlass, which Pareth swung around for demonstration.
“That works. You don’t often use maces but maybe that could work against the drones too? The kicks worked well but I worry you’re exposing yourself too much, you need to be careful when you fight without the sanctified grounds.”
[Sanctified grounds] was Pareth’s bread and butter with the huge buffs it gave. But, at 100 mana a second out of his very limited fifty thousand, in this dungeon with no ambient mana, if the group encountered too many groups of wandering drones like this one, he could quickly run out, hence why he hadn’t used it in that fight.
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We need to pace ourselves or this could be dangerous. We can’t even see the monsters coming because of the fog, so we have to be able and ready to fight at any time.
While she was lost in thoughts, Sofia also absorbed the imprints and quickly checked her mana heart’s status. Each drone was worth 0.01 imprint power, and gave 1 mana point.
Better than nothing, but what do I do with the debris?
The sunless debris without an imprint were worthless rocks, as far as Sofia knew, at least. Until now she stored them all because she could, but without access to her storage, she could only decide to encumber Bookie’s bag with them or leave them. They were left behind on the floor as the group moved ahead.
Remembering that she was still one [Master Thief], Sofia changed her title to [The Impervious].
[The Impervious]: Lost your head and survived.
Effect: Hits that would deal less than 5% of your maximum health do not damage you.
With this the drones’ black orbs can’t harm me as long as they don’t get a direct hit. Probably the best title I can use in a Dungeon full of small monsters.
Sofia’s expectation that it was full of small monsters was very rapidly proven true. The group soon encountered another pack of Sunless drones, then another, and another. The squads of drones were growing larger each time, quickly ramping up to the point where they were filling the whole corridor’s width and more drones appeared from the fog as soon as the previous ones were killed. Pareth’s shield and kicks being the only thing preventing them from coming out all at once and surrounding the group until all the rats died and Bookie summoned the paladins instead.
Twenty-five paladins in a small corridor was a lot, so half the group stood at the back, acting as a rear guard, while the other half fought with Pareth. Sofia didn’t really have to do anything, so she summoned a single Destroyer skull with the skull choir.
The Destroyer skull’s unique ability ‘Rip and tear’ allowed it to free itself from the usual skull choir pattern and to attack on its own, savagely biting and ramming the Sunless drones. It did some decent damage.
A shame it gets downsized to the size of a human skull like all the others… I don’t know if this is my new favorite choir skull or not. The sandworm energy beams are pretty nice too.
Sofia heard a subtle *ding*, and a new notification appeared in the corner of her vision.
‘[Skull choir] reached level 237’
Hell yeah, I missed these.
The group made slow and steady progress through the straight corridor full of drones until suddenly it split into two ways. Since the fog prevented them from scouting both left and right, Sofia just chose to go right by default.
They encountered more and more waves of Sunless drones, which was already starting to get old, but Sofia noticed something. The corridor was very slowly getting narrower. About twenty minutes of cautious walking and several fights later, the corridor had become so narrow that Pareth’s large shoulder could barely fit through anymore, and the paladin skeletons had to be dismissed because they were forced into one long ridiculous line. When the drones appeared, they could only come one by one to get blocked by Pareth’s shield and get shredded by the floating Destroyer skull.
For a ‘Hell difficulty’ Dungeon, it was starting off relatively easy, Sofia thought. Until both in front of Pareth and behind Bookie, the ground rose, walling them all into a stretch of about twenty meters of the narrow corridor.
Are we trapped?
Pareth punched the wall ahead of him, but his fist bounced right back off of the wall, just like his weapon did whenever he swung it and it hit the walls. This was the ‘no breaking walls’ dungeon restriction.
We’re just boxed in between four walls?
That’s pretty shitty… There must be a way out somehow?
A few ideas came to Sofia’s mind but before she could try anything out, the side walls started closing in. The already narrow corridor was getting worryingly narrower.
When is it going to stop?
Pareth had to turn to the side to avoid his shoulders getting crushed by the closing walls, and Sofia would soon have to do the same.
It’s not stopping!
Her back against a wall and her hands against the other, Sofia tried pushing back. Pareth and Bookie did the same, and Pareth even activated the [Sanctified grounds] to give them more strength.
Even like this, the walls did not even slow. There was already less than sixty centimeters separating the two walls.
At this rate we’ll get crushed!
Sofia was starting to panic a little bit, until she remembered what she was wearing on her arm.
Clenching her fist, she placed it against the wall in front of her as if she was going to punch it, and held her arm straight. The walls kept closing, and when they got to the point where the back wall touched her elbow, they stopped. Sofia’s forearm was lodged between the two walls, so the dragon scale armguard was actually what held the walls back. No matter how strong they were, they couldn’t crush the dragon claw, and because the walls couldn’t break, they could not go any further.
“We’re safe.”
Pareth and Bookie agreed, but safe or not, the three of them were still trapped in between four walls.
“I’ll get us out of here, just give me some time to think something up…”
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