Demon City Teth-Odin
The Rain Gate that led into the first level of the Teth-Odin Dungeon was bustling with activity. Various teammates chatted with each other, waiting for the rest of the team to show, or were discussing last minute plans. A working gang of Trolls pulled a train of monster carcasses towards the Dismantling Houses nearby. Leaning on one wall, a group of adventurers waited their turn as Healers of various sects treated the wounded. Two warriors, arm in arm staggered, suffering various cuts and bite marks from some monster. A few mages were carried away on stretchers, the symptoms of severe Mana Burn apparent for all to see as their teammates hurried to catch up with them. Collapsed to a nearby wall a team was weeping as their Orc leader spoke, his breathing becoming shallower and shallow with each breath.
Throughout the activity, The Whales made their way to the dungeon.
“There was a Dungeon, in Teth-Odin” Ingrid sang.
“Adventurers came for fun.” Arek sang along, recognizing the tune.
“And it’s been…the ruin of many a good dream” Cecil followed up.
“And God knows, I’m One!” The three chorused and made in each of their own way imitations of the keyboard interlude. “Pum-pum, pum, pum-pum-pum, pum, pum, pum-pum-pum!”
“I once was a Magical Girl, Isekai’d to this world.” Ingrid continued, belting out her best voice as she can.
“And was I once was her cute familiar” Ceciled followed up
“And me, moonshine man!” Arek concluded it as the three “linked arms” and skipped along as if the stone floor had a color-coded path for incoming adventurers, which it didn’t.
The Kobolds and Siria looked at each other, puzzled at the three Fae-lander’s strange act. They seemed to be in pretty good spirits today. They guessed that it probably had something to do with the “bullets” they had been working on all night.
Meanwhile, the two gun-toting Tixi Mice Arthur and Sully waddled along, leading the way. The sight of tamed magic creatures wearing scarves and armed with unknown weapons was what caught everyone’s attention.
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Teth-Odin Dungeon: Level One
“Iroquois, you are cleared to engage” Ingrid ordered as the team walked down the First Level, pointing her index and middle fingers together and gesturing at a group of adventurers battling some monsters.
“Ee-roe-koi??” Kvaris asked and saw Cecil’s Dialogue Window fly towards the melee.
“Weapons free.” Cecil said,aiming his slingshot at the monsters firing off a metal ball. The impact blew a hole through the monster’s torso, and the Mice followed suit, striking fatal wounds on other monsters.
“Iroquois is a type of flying war machine in my world.” Ingrid explained “it flies around and shoots enemies. You could say it was the airborne cavalry.”
“Flew in one of those” Arek said “I used to be a photographer in Nam.”
Ingrid looked at him in mild surprise “That’s news to me! But why would they want a Gulan to do that?”
Arek’s mandible chittered in amusement “You wanna piss off your sarge saying there’s a weird alien shrimp in the jungle and you want to shoot it? I was perfect for the job… of course I can’t say exactly where I was shooting.”
“Ooooh, I get it. Places the army officially can’t be in.” Ingrid chuckled.
“What are you guys talking about?” Kvaris asked
“Arek here, he was present in a war several years ago.” Ingrid replied ” He was using a device to capture images for information. I imagine it would be information about the location of enemy forces or activity in certain areas, how many they were… and so on.”
“Don’t forget, my kind aren’t exactly allowed in Ingrid’s… country. That’s why she was surprised.” Arek said.
“Iroquois, returning to base!” Cecil called, bringing the Dialogue Window back to Ingrid, who waved at the adventurers to let them know that she and her team would not be taking credit or loot for the kill.
“So you’re calling the group in Cecil’s Room ‘Iroquois’ because he flies around and shoots,” Kvaris chuckled. “Interesting choice of name.”
“Would be nice to have one of those.” Kinu remarked “Imagine what it’s like to fly high up the clouds.”
Arek shook his head “An Iroquois can’t fly that high, and even if you do, you’ll need to dress warmly, the air gets very cold and very thin to the point that there’s not enough of that oxygen you need to breathe.”
“Oksy-gen?” Siria repeated.
“It’s what we need in the air to breathe, it’s makes our blood red, and iron rust… incidentally there’s iron in our blood, that’s why it’s red.”
“Well, guess I’m getting rusty.” Kvaris chortled
“No no no,” Ingrid said quickly, “you don’t want to ‘un-rust’ your blood.Those are actually little parts of you that deliver the oxygen to the rest of your body… “
“Tango, twelve O’clock! Iroquois engaging!” Ingrid made her two-finger wave and the Dialogue window flew ahead, Cecil making a loud “YEEE-HAWWW” and the mice squeaked along, readying their slingshots. Cecil’s yee-haw alerting the adventurers ahead of his arrival before his Iroquois squad provided air support.
One adventurer was grabbed by one of the big fat humanoids,the pain of the humanoid’s vice-like grip caused her to drop her twin daggers, she threw up her arms to shield herself from the incoming excruciating pain of being eaten head first…
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Brody leapt out of the Dialogue Window, jamming his shotgun down the humanoid’s throat and opening fire. The back of the monster’s head opened up, spraying viscera everywhere and causing it to collapse on the floor. He quickly turned around and scampered up the arm of another humanoid reaching for him, shooting it in the head before using it to vault back into the Dialogue Window.
There was a third humanoid that also was reaching for Brody but Arthur took aim and shot it at the back of its head, the two now-decapitated monsters collided with each other before falling over.
“Th-thank you!” the group of newbies said. The Dialogue Window hovered down, revealing a slime and three swarm mice.
“Awww shucks ma’am, tweren’t nuthin” Cecil said in his best cowboy impression.
“We’re the Shadow Fangs team” the girl with the twin daggers said, still checking her ribs for damage but she seemed to have no real trouble breathing. “You’ve saved us.” She was quite short, and reminded Cecil of an elf, but some of her features looked off.
“I’m Selphie, it looks like I'm not cut out for this.” she said. The rest of her team was picking themselves off the ground.
“It’s alright, you guys can take the loot” Cecil threw a sideways look at the carcasses “We’re just helping out when we can.” At this point the rest of the team had arrived. Ingrid came over and began triaging the worst of the wounded but fortunately, Cecil’s intervention had at worst, left them with only some bruises and scrapes.
“Selphie.” A rabbit-like man pushed her towards the group “you need this…” turning to The Whales, he said “Selphie here’s doing dungeon clearing to.support herself We’re only D-Ranks hoping we could get a good harvest but it seems this season got too dangerous for us.”
Selphie clasped her hands together “I can coo-” but Ingrid came forward and patted her head. “We’ll take her in. Thanks for protecting her.” Siria put an arm comfortingly over Selphie and the team continued deeper into the dungeon.
The Shadow Fangs watched as the Whales turned around the corner and then looked at the carcasses and whistled. “Bugbears…freaking bugbears… in this level. This is getting bad.” The rabbit man and his team started cutting open it’s gut to extract the Soulstones. At the very least this was a very profitable harvest.
“Damn…I swear my leg was broken when that bugbear swiped at me” one said, “that weird elf lady touched it and now… “ he looked at his torn trousers showing a healthy leg.
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“Guess my secret’s out, I admit… I’m not a fairy” Ingrid sighed jokingly as they continued along the promenade. Iroquois was busy engaging monsters and leaving their carcasses for other adventurers to find.
Selphie was a dryad, which explained the wreath of flowers and leaves on her head and some on her body. As expected of her current situation, she only had simple leather armor, good against cutting but not impact damage or stabbing. Brody was cradled in her arms, comforting her by putting his paws on her face.
“My village fled on the day during the Red Moon, unfortunately I got separated when we accompanied the Red Foot Tribe of Orcs. I decided to take up adventuring here in Teth-Odin. That’s when I joined the Shadow Fangs as a hanger-on.”
“So basically they threw her at us?” Ingrid asked, but her tone revealed no displeasure.
“She’s not really an official member of that party, probably not even an official guildsman at all.” Siria looked at Selphie, who shook her head in confirmation. “She does get an official cut of the spoils but let’s just say-”
“Fees and other things she needs to turn in, got it.” Ingrid said “don’t worry about it Selphie, I think you looked pretty agile enough, you’ll do just great here.”
“Stick close to Arek, the sea-folk” Kvaris said, sniffing around to ensure there were no ambushes.He quietly tapped Ingrid’s back and held up three fingers.
Ingrid let out a quiet whistle, sending Iroquois hurrying back. Cecil saw Ingrid point around the corner he just passed and turned towards it.
“Guns now!” He shouted.
Selphie screamed in surprise as she heard the loud report of automatic fire. Ingrid and the two mice headed over quickly as Cecil pulled back. A whole swarm of nightmarish creatures rounded around the corner.
“Iroquois, pull back! I’ll tank!” Ingrid yelled, using the confines of this tunnel to keep the numbers down and take advantage of the penetrating effect of the bullets on the mob.
Cecil extended tendrils behind him to grab the heavy 50 cal BMG rifle. Channeling his Mana into the gun, he aimed at the thickest of the fray and fired, cutting a swathe through the mob. The three mice, squeaking furiously, ditched their submachine guns and scrambled to pick up the higher caliber rifles. Eli and Ralph picked up assault rifles and opened fire with short bursts, while Brody picked up a hunting rifle, aiming for high-priority threats.
Ingrid stood between the mob of monsters and the rest of The Whales, drawing all the aggression onto her. Siria with her ice magic, and Arthur, and Sully’s mythril guns acted as point defense using their ranged attacks at seemingly no concern for Ingrid being in the thick of the fray.
“C-careful! You’ll hit Ingrid!” Selphie yelled but then she saw what was happening.
Once a bullet or ice spike entered the range of her Aura it was pulled into an orbit around her, causing her to have a whirlwind of death shredding the abominations as they got in range. Her defensive shields alternated between two routines; the first was a self-puppeting routine that used an a detection field to sense an incoming hit; once registered Ingrid would automatically weave around the attack and strike with one of her own. And while this auto-counter was in progress, her aura added the “grinding-gears” routine, adding more damage to her attack as well as mangling those that tried to interrupt her.
While most of the abominations had focused on Ingrid some headed for the rest. Kinu and Kvaris, seeing the two mice being driven back, ran forward barking loudly, swords drawn. With a tap to the back letting them know they’re close, Arthur and Sully changed their tactics, disengaging from the ones the Kobolds were handling and shooting at the other monsters.
Ingrid couldn’t help but smile at seeing the two fluffy dogs with swords and gun-toting mice working together, they looked like a blur of white streaks of ink accompanied by a cacophony of barking and squeaking. That said, it didn’t help that they were in this situation. Sneaky bastards, she thought savagely at these devious abominations.
Briefly concentrating her energy, Ingrid let out a loud yell, her aura flaring out so brightly and incinerating a lot of the abominations around her. Turning to the tunnel, she saw more where pouring in, but were more sparse.
She braced herself for a powerful punch, ignoring the monsters around her as Iroquois took them down. She heard the barking of the Kobolds stop and them clanging their shields loudly in defiance, taunting more of them to come.
Sorry to disappoint you fluffy bois. Ingrid thought. But I’ll be damned to let any of you get hurt.
“Storm Fist!” She yelled. Stepping forward and performing an exaggerated and extended Karate punch as she stomped her foot. A huge vacuum formed in the middle of the tunnel the monsters were pouring in from, if the violent acceleration of multiple bodies colliding with each other didn’t kill them, it was the incoming storm of blows from all directions that did, turning them into paste.
“Storm Fist!” Ingrid stomped again, Arek and Siria, despite being the furthest away from the action felt the reverberation from the ground and the thrumming in their chests as the volley of omnidirectional strikes landed
“Storm…Fist!” the collection of monsters had thinned this time. Ingrid stood for a while watching for any possible newcomers but all was quiet. She sighed in relief.
“Cecil…take over.” Ingrid said. Arthur and Sully were about to run to Ingrid but the Kobolds held them back and they saw why.
Ingrid had frozen herself, encased in a huge spiky formation of ice.
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