Ch 11 running with friends
We reached the portal. As I went to step through Sorko made a motion to stop.
“How are we doing this?” I look at him, confused. Oh, right. Configuration is a thing in parties.
“I suppose I'll be in front. I can gravity them first and then these four can target any that don’t get taken down. Then we clean up any that aren't dead?” I look at him. I think that sounds reasonable.
He gave me a nod. “The room is wide enough, but I suggest we don’t spread out far. Just enough to aim for starters. We might need two sets of gravity since there will be larger groups. You said the wands catches three or four?”
I nodded to him. “All of three, parts of four, was soloing so didn’t have a room with five. Maybe two of us should gravity then. Right and left?” I look to Retil.
Retil nods to me. “Faeriellsons was a board game I used to play, so I'm using that. No one knows it anymore.” I nod to him.
Taylor states “I never use the word lairds, Scottish lords. Takes a bit of my accent so ill use that.”
Willaims goes next. “I rarely hear lunting, since my grandpa died.”
Moore sighs. “I used to be called claptrap, so I'll use it. I never say it myself.”
I grin at him. That works. We all have usable words. Bit odd to hear these things but it works, I guess.
I walked through the portal once more. My mind is suddenly at ease. It's strange I know I should feel anxious, but I'm not.
“I suppose I should tell you, one of my skills is mental. Gives me clarity in stress. I nearly forgot about it until it kicked in. It works well in the dungeon.”
Sorko startles a little at how my voice has gone cold. That’s fair I suppose. I'm a little distant now. The hallway looks much the same as when I was first in the dungeon. The distance is the same, but the room is different. Instead of one goblin there are six.
“I'll aim gravity for just to the right of middle, if one of you will go left? We might get them all together.” as I move to the right of the hall.
Taylor nods to me. Moving to my left. Retil moves to middle of the hall, Williams and Moore just behind him. I feel a little bad for Sorko, being carried as he is.
“We step in on 3?” I raise a hand with three fingers raised. As I lower them, I walk forward so I'm only a pace away from the edge pf the doorway. Lowering my last finger Taylor and I step past and shout together. “Riposte!”, “Lairds!”
We see most of the six goblins down on the ground. I say most as the main bodies are in the circles of gravity, but what I didn’t account for was overlap. Less than a foot together where the circles of effect meet the goblin leg there is not just crushed but literally grounded into the floor.
“I don’t know if any are still alive, would ya’ll check?” I ask as I pull back my wand.
Williams goes forward with a knife in one hand and force bolt in the other. He pokes a couple of heads. “Seems all dead to me. Looks like the gravity is more effective than I thought.”
Sorko gives a nod. “Then we can move on. Let's find out what the next room has to offer.”
I breathe for a moment. I'm not the least disturbed by the gore on the floor.
“Can we wait a moment? I like knowing the dungeon recycles the monsters.”
They all look at me.
“I mean, the monsters get absorbed into the ground and then get reinstated next dungeon run? They get reabsorbed and refreshed and repeated. Every dungeon runs. They're not really alive just mana converted to look like monsters to us.”
Retil pauses a moment. “That makes sense, I was wondering how they would eat if they were trapped in the dungeon, but they don’t. They don’t actually live here or are transported here. They just exist one moment and don’t exist the next.”
I nod to him. “The dungeon recycles mana, that’s what the system wants. The mana moved about and reused.”
He nods to me. We walked down the short hallway to see the next room. I count the horde of goblins. Twelve this time.
“Does it seem like it doubles? Or is it just matching us?” Williams asked.
This time Retil responded first. “It matches the party size. For soloes its 1, then 2 then 3, 4, then boss. Since there are six of us. It should be 6, then 12, 18, 24, and boss. We will probably have trouble with the boss.”
I nod. “For solo there was a hobgoblin and two goblins. We might have multiple hobgoblins. If my guess is right, there will be 6 hobgoblins and 12 goblins. To make it even, or there will be a different boss entirely.”
They grimace. I told them about my experience with the hobgoblin. I didn’t do that well, but I wasn’t in the military, so I'm not used to fighting. But then, they are national guards. They are really used to fighting either.
“Should we all do gravity this time?” I look to the others. They give nods to me. I switch wands in hand, putting force bolt in right hand and gravity in left.
“You can duel wield but it harder with different effect wands. If you four all gravity, I'll shoots any that stay up. I've had more practice with it.”
Sorko gives me a look and pulls out a knife. It looks about 18 inches long. Maybe more of a short sword. I give him a questioning look.
“We did say we always take the sword with us.” he shrugs at me. I snort.
I step back as the four of them form a line. I counted out loud this time.
“3”
“2”
“1”
“Go”
They step forth, I have my hands between Retil and Taylor and the four of them all shout their trigger words. I hope they chose their aim well.
Seems they did. Ten of the twelve goblins are down. I quickly aim, “riposte, riposte,” at the two goblins still standing. They're dead now.
Sorko goes and checks the downed goblins this time. As he nudges one it moves to attack him, so he slices at it with the sword.
“Dead now.” he says.
I groan. This is only the second room. Yet we already have goblins standing.
“we’ll need to space the gravity out better the more goblins we get.” Moore says. I agree with him.
“The room will be bigger this time. As we go along, the hallways get longer too. They might be more spread out. If there are any clusters, you might have to aim for that. But you might try and offhand gravity and use force bolt right after gravity.” I stated out loud. I get varying looks in return.
“We need to try and limit injuries. The boss room is going to be the hardest because the gravity doesn’t take them down. And the force bolt takes multiple shots. It took me six shots to kill the hobgoblin my first run. And the only reason I could get them off is I took out a leg. And made it drop its weapon.”
A few grimace. If there was a hob for each of us, then we would each be fighting on our own.
We reached the doorway to the next room, I counted. 18 goblins this time. I look to the others.
“let's go back to the second room. I want you four to practice using both wands together. That will make a huge difference.”
I get varying looks.
“What do you mean using both wands?”
“Two hands two wands. Since they are both point and shoot you can immediately fire one after another. We can practice and get it done. Means we’ll be in here longer, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.”
I get nods in return. We headed back to the second room. “The way to do this is make sure you finish saying your trigger and focus on which hand your using first. I usually having the hand I'm currently using in front of me and the other off to the side. It makes it easier to aim too.”
Retil looks around. He goes near the middle of the room and faces the wall.
“Faeriellsons, Faeriellsons” he says after switching hands back and forth. There isn't any visible damage anywhere. He looks disappointed.
Taylor goes to stand next to him and starts to practice as well. Williams and Moore go to the opposite wall. As they start practicing, I go to Sorko.
“So, what have ya’ll learned about the dungeon anyhow?” I asked him. Thinking if anyone would know, he has heard it.
“no one under age 20 can get into the dungeon. Had a couple of privates try but they were only 18 and 19. They couldn’t get through the portal. Just kept stepping back and forth, just turned around each time. They can buy from the store and have skills but can't get in. Seems the system has age limits on things. Fucking good thing too.”
I agreed with that. Hopefully the children didn’t pick skill yet. Maybe until they were old enough to understand the consequences. Doubt it though. But no one under 20? Seems an odd age to choose. Not my problem though. Just means something else to deal with later. How to feed everyone.
He continues on. “Guns and munitions don’t work in dungeons, but you knew that. Had a guy try and sell a gun to the store it failed as he wasn’t the creator of the weapon. To sell something you have to design and make it yourself. So, no more fabrication lines either. Everything will be handmade from now on.”
I winced. I sort of knew that. I had guessed since it let me sell the tags and wands, but still. No more piece-mealing something, it had to be yours from start to finish. This was going to put a cramp on a lot of people who highly specialized for one thing.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
He added more. “More people are using the healer out front too. Not a lot of people are getting seriously wounded, but enough are. The healers don’t have many usable skills yet, but they can keep someone alive until they get to professionals.” he grimaced. “The mundane professionals I should say. Christ almighty.”
I grimaced as well. The world was rapidly changing. And we had to change with it. Magic healing wasn’t even the first part. The fact that we had to risk our lives as the world collapsed though.
“It could always be worse? Monsters could get out of dungeons.” I told him.
“You mean they can't?” He looked at me seriously.
“Yeah, the system has a help guide mode. I asked that. It said only summoned monsters can be outside dungeons. Not sure who would summon monsters but still. The monsters can't leave the dungeon.”
He gives a long sigh. “That sure as hell makes me relieved. Half the reason we’re stationed here is because someone thought the dungeon would explode or something.”
I grimace. Yeah, that’s a bad thought. The others continued to practice. I see that Taylor and Williams seem to be doing better. Maybe they should get a second force bolt sometime?
Sorko calls an end to the practice. “that's enough for now. We need to get a move on.” They all fall in line with us. We started heading back down the hallway.
Nearing the doorway, I turn to them. “We should all use gravity spread out, then force bolt on anything still standing.” I get four quick nods. I hold up three fingers. Then two, then one. Then I made sharp motion down and we all burst into the room and shouted our triggers. Of the 18 I think 14 or so were caught in gravity. It seems we didn’t spread out enough. Three more goblins went down as we got them. Taylor and Moore aiming for the same goblin on accident. I shot the last goblin standing.
“There are probably some alive ones this time. We didn’t spread the gravity out enough. Sorko you want to take care of that?” I turn to look at him. He gives me a nod and walks over to the pile of gore. Using his knife, he pokes around seeing if any are still moving. He slices a couple through the throat.
“Two made it, they would have bled out quick though. Think that there was a bit of overlap again.” I nod. It's hard to judge where everyone was aiming. We need to make some kind of metric. Maybe use paces or steps over?
“We could practice some here? Make a target and where we aim compared to each other, I think we should have it one person down the middle and the others spaced to the sides. Or divide the section evenly?” I look to the others, seeing if there were any arguments.
“One in the middle and two to each side. Maybe the sides aiming down by two goblins each. There will be overlap as they just circle up and we can't always get to the back ones. But it should make the front line easier. And then we can shoot any in the section we were already aimed at.” Retil says. Previous gamer experience proving useful once again. Or maybe a military thing? I should ask sometime.
“Next room is 24 goblins, then boss. Are we trying to complete the dungeon?” Moore asks.
Sorko gives a nod. “Have to. Hade a deal and system is enforcing it. To pay for all the gear we need to clear the dungeon.” everyone gives a grimace.
“I know that monsters don’t follow you into the hallway, so if you're overwhelmed you can just step back. I don’t think the monsters will respawn while we are in the dungeon so if there are too many, we could snipe them.” I tell them. I can't remember if that had come up yet.
I get a nod to me. “We could take turns sniping the boss, bosses? Whatever is there. Take out the goblins first though.” We all nod.
Getting into the hallway to the next room, we line up. Me in the middle Taylor and Moore to my left and Retil and Williams to my right. Sorko behind us giving us the count this time.
“3”
“2”
“1”
“Go!”
We stepped in and fired at once. I think 18 goblins go down as there are still six coming at us. We all fire again, then again. The goblins are mushy. I remember getting to this point on my own and how my head was clear, this time I felt nothing. Just some trash to take out. No big deal. There is definitely something going wrong with my head.
Sorko goes to a few goblins that are feebly scrabbling in the dirt. A few quick slices and then stillness.
“let's take a quick break, yeah?” I ask them.
We wait around until the dungeon absorbs the goblins and sit down, avoiding any of the splatter still on the ground. Leaning against the wall I pull out my water and take a few drinks. Tastse like mango, not too bad.
“Anyone want a drink? Roulette fruit flavor.” I held up the bottle. Retil walks to me.
“Roulette?” he asks
“Unlimited use nutrition add-in fruit flavor. Flavor changes every drink. I could say mystery, but I like roulette better.” I hear a couple of snorts.
Retil sighs and takes a drink. Then another. “Not bad. Kiwi I think, and orange. Might get one of those.”
“Just fruit or just nutrient unlimited is 40 credits, for both in one bottle is 60.”
Retil gives me a hard look. “And how just happen to have enough credits for frivolity?”
I snort. “My wands sell for 50 each. And I've sold more than thirty. I even have food if ya’ll are hungry.” I look to them. I get a couple of nods. I go to pull out the fried fish. Easiest to eat with hands, and there are six of us. I pass around the platter and they each grab a fillet. We all started to eat.
Taylor gives me a funny look. “Where did you get that from? You don’t have a bag or anything on you. You did it earlier with your equipment too.”
“I have an inventory. Did you not get one?” I look to the others. Shaking heads all around.
Retil spoke. “I thought about it. But I didn’t want to give up the skill points for it. I thought I could always get a bag of holding at some point. Guess I know better now.” I wince. Yeah, that’s not going to happen any time soon. Maybe I could? I could try at least. I tell him so.
“I might be able to make something, but I'm not sure. I'll have to level up my enchanting first, I think. There're a few things I want to make too.”
He nods. “Bags of holding would be useful for a lot of reasons, but personally I'd want it for living out of. Wouldn’t need a rucksack if I could fit my life into a satchel.”
I nodded. “Half the reason I wanted an inventory was so I could keep everything on hand and never lose track of something. Now I don’t have to worry about leaving something vital to me somewhere it'll get stolen either.”
I pause a moment thinking about it. Maybe I should? Yeah. “I was actually thinking about getting a camper or something from the store and living in it. Since I have my inventory, I don’t need to worry about storage. I have pristine so I don’t need a shower. I can probably enchant something to act as a toilet. So, I'd just need space for my bed, computer and a table to enchant. There are lots of parks and RV grounds here. Even the parking garage. But I'm worried that currency will crash and the apartment I'm staying in won't take credits. I don’t really like the apartment that much too.”
Williams and Moore gave me a nod each. Sorko snorts.
“you're actually complaining about having housing when we are about to have a gold rush situation? Everybody and their damn dog are going to a dungeon. Be glad you have somewhere to stay for now. The parking garage is being set up for camps so that people won't be setting up under the overpasses. Two parking spaces to each person. Corner spots to be cleaning spots. They're trying to get port-a-potties in there, but it isn't working so great. If you can make toilet, tell us immediately. Well run the dungeon just to buy that. And tell everyone who sets up camp they can buy their own toilet and set it up.” he huffs after that. I nod to him. I can do that. It was near the top of my list anyway.
We sit for a few minutes after finishing up eating. Retil starts humming something. Sounding suspiciously like mission impossible. I snickered at him. We laugh.
Sorko gives a sigh, then stands. We follow suit. “Time to get this going then.”
We start down the last hallway to the boss room. Tension high as can be. Getting close enough to see inside we didn’t expect to find this. Three hobgoblins. Fine ok. We can deal with that. What I didn't expect to see were the hobgoblins saddled on boars. All the hobgoblins in the room had tatty armor, but so did the boars. Their tusks looked menacing, looking razor sharp. We pulled back.
“Ok, this is not what we were expecting. I don’t think any party this size has gone into the boss room. So, we aim for the legs. On everything. Boars first then hobs. With luck the mounted hobs will come down. You said gravity doesn’t work on hobs?” Sorko gives me a look.
“Honestly? I didn’t try it. They look like they have too much muscle to be worth the shot. I think gravity will work on the boars though, especially if we double up.” I tell him, thinking hard. It took six bolt shots to down the hobgoblin in my first dungeon. But I had taken out its legs in one shot. I continued. “I did take out the first hob in the legs with one shot though. It took six shots to kill it.” I get a nod in return.
Sorko starts again. “Here’s the plan. Taylor, Retil gravity on the boars. Left then right. Shoot the legs of the mounted hobs. Williams, Moore and you go for the legs of the hobs. With luck we can down them and take our time cleaning up.” He gives out our instructions. We all nod.
The mounted hobs are on the sides to Taylor and Retil go to the left end. The three of us in the middle.
“middle” I call.
“left” Williams says.
“Last one for me then.” Moore says.
“Everyone ready?” Sorko asks. We all voice our agreement. He counts down aloud.
“3”
“2”
“1”
“Go!”
Once more we step through and shout our triggers, aiming as we called them. I quickly repeat, “riposte, Riposte, riposte, riposte” as I shoot the hob in the middle. I hear the others doing the same. Since its down for now I swing to the right where the boar and rider are still going. I shouted again. “Riposte, riposte, riposte, riposte.” aiming for the face of the boar. Its charging towards us standing in the doorway. We haven't moved into the room more than a foot or two in case we need to step back.
I wasn’t paying attention to the others, which is a mistake now. The hob to the right made it to Moore. He pulled out his knife and started fighting it. The flailing hob was using a cudgel. I was too close to their fight and took a hit to the back of my head. The bludgeon made me lose focus and dropped both wands from my hands. Thankfully Williams was right there with his own knife after downing his hob. He stepped behind the fight and sliced the hob down the back. It shrieked and spun to fight this new attacker. Giving Moore a chance to force bolt it again. Straight in the head. Taylor and Retil had finished the first boar and rider and were already working on the second by the time I pulled myself back together. After picking up my wands and putting them in my inventory I pulled out a pristine tag and handed it to Williams, who was unfortunate enough to be standing behind the hob as Moore splattered its brains. He was covered in viscera and gore. He took the tag and placed it on his face. After a moment he was completely clean. His armor wasn’t but now he didn’t look like an axe murderer. He gives me a grateful look. I grin at him.
The others didn’t fare too badly. Moore looks like he’ll have a couple of bruises, but it should heal quickly. Taylor and Retil didn’t have any trouble at all. Standing out of range and sniping at the boars.
“Thanks for occupying the other while we dealt with the first. It gave us more trouble than expected. But gravity works on the hobs and boars at least.” Retil grins at me. He seems to be in a good mood. I give a nod. My head throbs.
Sorko comes up to us. “That was good work for being a team thrown together. Little bit more practice and I can see how this would work well. Moore, what the hell happened?” He looks over to him.
“I shot too high and hit chest instead of leg. Barely phased him. Think he was faster than the others too. He was closer than they got.” he stated simply. That would make sense. There could be varying degrees between the monsters themselves.
Sorko nods. “Well, you're benched til you're healed. Now let's get the clear reward and get outta here.” He paces to the unveiled false wall. We followed him.
First Time Clear
Reward
Cost
Personal Interface
10000
It's still there then. I don’t have the credits for it, so I dismiss the screen. Another pops into place.
Party-6
Clear Reward
150
Contribution
41%
Contribution Reward
10 Exp
I think hard for a moment and call status.
Name
Level
Experience Gain
Credits
Arthur Turner
0
112.5%
1365
I stare. I stare some more. I have more than 100 percent experience? How does leveling up work? Do I have to go somewhere to level up? Can I level up at home? In the dungeon? Do I have to trigger it somehow? I feel rooted to the ground, just staring at the screen. I can level up. I feel myself start shaking. I didn’t expect this to happen so fast. The experience added up, I think. Each goblin, each hobgoblin. The mounted hobgoblins. I had gained 81 experience from running with a party. Were as I’d get 15 experience from running solo. Then the clear reward. This is the difference. Everyone gets credits. All the same. But it’s the exp that changes depending on how many you fight. Not the credits. This is why people will run parties. Bot credits.
I take a deep breath. Trying to calm myself. And then another. I getting concerned looks. I'll be ok. Just, was not expecting this. I try to smile at them. It doesn’t seem to work. The portal out is close by I start walking to it. The others follow. I step through into the evening sunlight.