After travelling through the night, we arrived at our destination shortly before dawn. The journey itself had been fairly uneventful. Because we were travelling in the dark, everyone aside from Richter and me carried or wore a lantern as they travelled. The light attracted a few enemies to us, but we were able to dispatch them without any issues. Due to my ability to see clearly in the dark and Richter scouting ahead on his own, the monsters were not able to ambush us. For nocturnal monsters that relied on attacking before being seen, losing this advantage proved disastrous. While their damage was high, they had very poor defense so not getting the first attack in meant they fell very quickly.
Once we had entered the cave, we checked that there were no enemies in the first chamber, then decided to take a short break. While our physical bodies don’t need rest, travelling through the night while being on guard from attacks was mentally tiring. While we relaxed, we decided to take turns signing out for a little while to eat and deal with any other biological needs in the real world before we started our invasion of the goblin cave. While this room seemed to be safe, we still signed out in pairs, so we could defend ourselves if attacked. Those that were left prepared their gear, and I took this opportunity to drop my disguise. I didn’t think it was possible, but my wings actually felt a little stiff until I stretched them out and flapped them a few times.
“Going with that form, huh?”
Jayren was watching me curiously as I readjusted to having my spare limbs.
“Yeah, it’s really best if I fight like this when I can. When I’m disguised, I can’t use a lot of my abilities, but more importantly my maximum energy is limited down to 40.”
“Wait, you’ve been fighting with only 40 energy this whole time?! I guess since you’re a mage it doesn’t really set you back too much, but it’s still a pretty hefty limitation.”
He looked down contemplating how I’ve fought with less than half my energy so far.
“By the way, how does that work? I mean controlling your wings and such.”
“My wings? Honestly it’s still a little awkward, and I stop being aware of them when I’m disguised so I have to get used to them again every time. Most of the time they move on their own if I’m not consciously thinking about them. For example, I don’t intentionally move my tail at all, but it seems to move with my emotions and to help me maintain balance. Similarly, if I’m not trying to move them, the wings naturally fold onto my back to stay out of the way. If I do focus on them, it feels like I’ve got a couple of extra, misshapen arms growing out of my back. It’s hard to explain. I actually spent quite a while figuring them out in the character creation area before starting the game.”
“That’s cool. I kinda wish I had ended up with a less standard race. Not even a rare race, I would have liked a beastman even. Just something a little different.”
“Well, there’s supposedly ways to change races later, so you might be able to find some way of making yourself different. You could make that a goal.”
“Yeah, maybe after we’ve linked up with the rest of our group, I’ll do that. Though from what I’ve seen of the forums, only a few of those methods have been found yet, and they’re limited to specific original races.”
“I’m actually surprised anyone has found a way already. We’ve only been here a couple days, and right now players are mostly limited to staying near civilized areas. I’d wait till we can get to more dangerous areas before you start looking. That’ll be where the more interesting ones are.”
As we were talking, Celeste and Aurora signed back in, so it was my turn to log out. Deciding not to take the time to prepare a proper meal, I quickly made a fairly large sandwich and downed some water. I did toss together something in my slow cooker for later, so I could have a quick hot meal next time. Finally, I took care of my other needs, and slid back into my gaming pod.
“Oh, Lilith’s back!”
As soon as I had signed in, Celeste and Aurora came over to me.
“We were hoping to ask you about dungeons while we waited, is that okay?”
“Sure, I’ve got nothing else to do. What do you want to know?”
“Well, we’ve never done something like this, so we have no idea what to expect. What kind of things will we be doing? Also, how did you all expect that the enemies wouldn’t come in here?”
“Oh that. In most games, if you die in a dungeon, you return to the beginning of the dungeon, rather than back to town. So usually there won’t be enemies there.”
“... Are we going to die in here?”
Both twins looked quite concerned about that. I guess they hadn’t been aware of that possibility.
“Maybe. It’s a dungeon intended for beginners so it may be easier to get through than usual, but in most games I’ve played going into a dungeon with a group of people who have never been there before and with no idea what to expect, you can expect to die at least a couple times before clearing it. Don’t worry too much about dying, though. It’s just a part of the game. Besides, some of the best stories come from dying in absurd ways.”
After that, I went over some of the basics of dungeoneering in games with the two of them. We discussed standard tactics, such as pulling enemies to a bottleneck or other advantageous terrain, and talked some about some of the more common traps and mechanics we might encounter. After he signed back in, Jayren also joined us. He clearly had played quite a few games himself, and was quite knowledgeable as well.
---
Once everyone had signed back in we set off. As we moved, Richter slipped off to scout ahead from the shadows. For the rest of us, Jayren took the lead. Following him were Celeste and I, and bringing up the rear were Kiera and Aurora. Because the cavern was even darker than it had been outside, Celeste and Jayren wore lanterns strapped to their belts, while Kiera and Aurora carried theirs. Since my night vision could see further than the light could reach, I also had the job of watching ahead and warning the others if anything made it past Richter and was coming our way.
After a short walk, we were approaching a bend in the path when Richter materialized from the shadows. In the room just past the bend were three goblins. According to him, one had a bow, and the other two used two handed spears. After debating whether to lure them around the corner or charge into the room, I suddenly had an idea.
“Hey, could you guys let me try something with this group? Since they’re fairly weak, it should be a good chance to test one of my skills to make sure it’ll work on these guys.”
“Hmm, I suppose it won’t hurt. We can wait ready around the corner in case whatever you’re doing fails. If things go south just run back here.”
With a smirk, I crept up toward the corner and peeked around it. Sure enough, there were three goblins standing with a small torch burning behind them to light the room. The flickering torchlight didn’t really let me see many details about them. From what I could tell, they were the typical fantasy goblins you see in nearly every story. Small, dark green skinned, and all together not a very attractive race. They were usually not known for their intelligence, and judging by the fact that I had watched one accidentally light his spear on fire twice already, these were no different.
Luckily for me, the light of their torch didn’t quite reach the corner where I was, so the goblins couldn’t see me yet even if I don’t have a convenient stealth skill. I made a mental note to look into getting that and a skill to cast my spells quietly if this worked. If it did, this would be a technique that could be a lot of fun to use.
I raised my hand at the archer and targeted the two spearmen (speargoblins?) using my Wide Influence skill. Then, I cast my Frenzy spell. Attacking all three burned a fifth of my mana and half my energy, but the results were absolutely worth it.
All three goblins looked my way as the spell flashed out at them, but as one would expect, basic goblins don’t have a lot of willpower and thus were completely unable to resist the effect of my spell. The two with spears immediately turned to start stabbing each other. One thrust his spear out, but was parried, then stabbed in the gut with a counter attack. Alive but wounded, he braced to try to attack again, but the archer who had been forgotten by the others till now had taken aim. A crude arrow lodged itself cleanly into the wounded goblin’s chest, ending his life.
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Unfortunately for the archer, he didn’t get a chance to fire again, as the first speargoblin had run at him after the other died, and began viciously thrusting at him without giving him a chance to react. The archer managed to dodge the first couple thrusts, but the third caught him in the thigh, sending him tumbling to the ground. From there, the spear made short work of him.
As all this was going on, I motioned the others to come to the corner.
“Good news, there’s only one goblin left. It’s one of the one’s with a spear, so prepare for melee combat I guess. He should be coming this way soon.”
As I spoke, I rejoined the formation behind Jayren and prepared my whip. It turned out I didn’t need to, though. As soon as the goblin rounded the corner, it was hit squarely in the chest by a bolt of lighting. While it survived that hit, it was stunned, and couldn’t raise any defenses to meet Celeste’s charge. Her spear had a lot of momentum behind it from the charge, and cleanly finished off the goblin before it even registered the hit.
After the goblin fell, I couldn’t help but grin. That had worked perfectly.
“What exactly did you do? I saw you cast Frenzy, but how did this goblin manage to kill both the others without taking any damage?”
“Well, this goblin actually got lucky. When I cast Frenzy, I used one of my skills that let me target all three goblins with the spell, so they all got frenzied. The three proceeded to attack each other, and this one just happened to avoid getting hit.”
“That seems like a crazy powerful ability. Are there any drawbacks?”
“Only that the energy cost is the amount of mana the spell costs for each additional target. So My Frenzy is 25 mana, and that cost me 50 energy on top of that. It’s not something I can use a lot, especially with enemies that may resist the completely. Thankfully, I sort of figured the basic goblins wouldn’t have enough willpower to stop it.”
Kiera nodded. “Hmm, so 5 targets at most then. Still, not a bad way to start a large fight.”
“Yeah, I figured I don’t have much else to do with my energy right now, unless I want to start using my succubus abilities on goblins. I’ve found draining monsters isn’t very effective, though, and the frenzy spell is probably more effective than enthralling one of them. I could grow my claws in case they get too close, but I’ve got a whip and a tank, so I doubt I’ll need to do that.”
“True. For all his flaws, Jayren does make a very good meatshield.”
“Why do I get the feeling that wasn’t really a compliment…”
Kiera just patted Jayren’s shoulder and cleanly ignored his complaints about her slightly ambiguous statement. At first, I thought Kiera disliked the knight, but as we traveled together I began to suspect this was actually what flirting looked like to the two. I wouldn’t be surprised if they told us they were in a relationship in real life.
---
After collecting the loot from the goblins, we continued down the passage. Initially all we encountered were small groups like the first one, but as we continued the groups began to get larger, occasionally even outnumbering us. We opted not to use the mass frenzy technique so the others could train their skills as well. Instead I mostly stuck to harassing the goblins with Migraine when they moved to attack someone, while occasionally casting Inspire to buff one of our attackers. Because our group was mostly melee focused, I did still cast Frenzy on any archers we encountered. This caused the archers to target their allies with their first few arrows, giving Richter time to sneak up on them and finish them off.
Migraine
Causes a sharp pain directly into the target's mind
- causes a small amount of physical damage
- May cause the target to flinch
- May slow the target's reactions for a short period of time
Mana cost: 10
Inspire
Adds one point for every 2 levels of the Enchantress to all of the targeted allies stats temporarily.
Mana cost: 30
At first, there was no real variety in the goblins we were facing. Just typical goblins with spears and bows, which we knew were both easy to beat. As we ventured deeper into the cave, however, the groups began to have more variety in their weapons and equipment. Some goblins would have axes, swords, or clubs instead of the spears. These had different methods of attacking, which meant we had to pay attention to handle them appropriately. A few goblins even had leather shields and armor made up of hides and bones, making them much more difficult for us to quickly defeat. For these, Jayren would get their attention focused on him while the rest of us quickly killed all of the additional goblins, before focusing on the armored goblin. Underneath that armor it was still just a goblin, so with our combined attacks, it would fall quickly.
As we continued on, we finally encountered a new type of enemy. It looked like the other goblins, except it was almost twice as big and had tan skin instead of the standard green. It wore armor made of bones that seemed to be of higher quality than any we had seen in this cave so far, and was carrying a large two handed club. Overall, it looked quite imposing compared to the enemies we had faced up to now. Thankfully, there was only one of them, backed up by two goblin archers.
“Hmm, looks like we’ve got a Hobgoblin, if I were to guess.”
Kiera nodded at my assessment.
“Probably. He’ll probably be tougher than anything we’ve seen so far. Think you can Frenzy him?”
“I can try. At the worst, I can get the archers for sure. With them out of the way we’d be able to focus down the big one.”
“Alright, let’s go with that. Lilith will try to Frenzy them all. If it works, we wait till there’s only one left. If the big one doesn’t get frenzied, Jayren will get it’s attention and Richter will sneak up on the archers. Hopefully one will die before due to friendly fire, but if not you’ll need to finish them both before rejoining the main fight. The rest of us will focus on the big one. Celeste, stay back a bit and use your charge first to get him with a big hit. Aurora be ready, we have no clue how hard he’ll hit.”
Our plan made, I targeted the goblins and fired off a Frenzy on them all. As expected the archers immediately went after each other. The hobgoblin’s reaction was much more interesting. Initially, the spell took effect on him as well. He raised his club and started to turn toward the nearest archer, but suddenly he let out a low warcry, and turned back to face us before charging.
“That was strange, it looked like it worked but then he shrugged it off. Incoming!”
At my yell, Jayren dashed forward and thrust his shield forward while Richter slipped out of our formation and into the shadows at the edge of the room. The instant he was in range, the hobgoblin swung his club in a wide arch toward Jayren. He swiftly positioned his shield to intercept, and braced for the impact. For good measure, he also activated his taunt skill to ensure he remained the main target. The hit was still heavy enough to knock off a portion of his health even with the shield. He grimaced for a moment before a soft light enveloped the arm under his shield, restoring the damaged limb.
“Geez, he hits hard. I’ve got his attention, Go!”
As soon as he had finished speaking, a bolt of lightning shot out, slamming into the hobgoblin’s chest. Following closely behind that was Celeste’s charge. She dashed forward and thrust at the hobgoblin with her spear. With the added momentum, it buried itself deep into his side before she pulled it out and backed off a step. Charging drained her energy very quickly, so it was really only useful for getting into the fight with a heavy blow, then using basic attacks while waiting to regain enough energy to properly fight.
The hobgoblin let out a howl and raised it’s club over it’s head to bring down a heavy blow directly on top of Jayren. Even with his shield, that was likely to be a painful hit, and one that wouldn’t be necessary. Just before it began the swing, I fired off the Migraine spell. The howl of rage suddenly changed to a grunt as it flinched from the sudden pain directly applied to it’s rather tiny mind. Unfortunately as a warrior, it’s tolerance for pain was quite high so it was unlikely to suffer lingering effects, but I was able to interrupt the heavy attack aimed for Jayren at least.
In this manner, we continued to fight the hobgoblin for several minutes. Eventually, Richter returned from dealing with the archers, appearing out of nowhere behind it and slashing at it’s hamstrings. This robbed it of mobility, but even more importantly also lowered the power of it’s attacks as it couldn’t get a proper stance anymore. This helped considerably, as every time Jayren deflected a blow, he took some damage. Aurora had been able to keep up so far, but her mana would run out eventually.
With the enemy crippled, we were able to finish it off with relative easy. It still managed to get a few swings in, one of which Jayren was out of position and unable to block, but overall we were able to defeat it without too much trouble. Still, this was a much more challenging fight than the goblins had been up to now. And as far as we could tell, this wasn’t a boss or anything, so it was possible we would encounter more of these hobgoblins later.
As we gather the loot, Celeste held up the bone armor it had been wearing.
“Does anyone mind if I take this? I don’t think my basic armor can withstand a hit from these guys, so I would like to get something a bit stronger on.”
The rest of us didn’t have any complaints. Kiera, Aurora and I wore robes, while Jayren had sturdier plate armor on. Richter was the only one who might have wanted it, but he said the bones make too much noise, so he wouldn’t be able to sneak while wearing it. Celeste immediately equipped the bone armor in place of the leather she had. It had a somewhat savage appearance to it, with layer of leather as the base underneath a number of small, carved bones loosely sewn onto the outside to provide a bit of extra protection. Celeste looked quite pleased with the overall effect, though.
“Still, that was quite a spike in the challenge if this dungeon. After all the easy battles with the regular goblins, I was starting to let my guard down. Looks like this won’t just be a walk in the park after all.”
We all agreed with Jayren. Up to now, we had been experimenting with various techniques on the goblins, just to see what worked and what didn’t. They had been extremely weak enemies, so we were lulled into a sense of security, which was just shattered completely. If we would be encountering more of these, we would need to start getting serious. And if semi-regular monsters were that tough, I was interested to see what other surprises this dungeon might hold for us.