Chapter 16.
Name
Elias Mathews
Health
100/100
Age
15
Mana
72/98
Species
Human
Stamina
100/100
Class
Scholar
Strength
10
Level
1
Dexterity
10
Titles
Runekeeper
Agility
10
Party
Unnamed Party (Leader)
Endurance
10
Guild
None
Constitution
10
Allegiance
None
Magic Power
10
Eli had taken a moment to examine his status since the fighting had stopped, while the others had argued. He’d made a few deductions regarding his skill.
First of all, he could pass off the enchantments on his gear onto the gear of his allies. That much was clear from the fight.
Second, he could run more than one enchantment through his gear at a time, but it grew more expensive with each iteration. He knew that his maximum mana without any spells active was 193. He knew that it cost him fifty mana to keep Gabri manifested. He was currently enchanting his own clothes and his mother’s to be immune to slashing damage. He wasn’t certain what that cost.
But he knew that his maximum mana had been down to sixty-eight at the end of the combat. When he had released the enchantments on Maia’s weapon, his maximum mana had gone back up by thirty points to ninety eight. His current mana had not recovered instantly, however, and he was presently waiting for it to do so.
He continued to maintain the enchantments on the weapons of his mother and Peter. It was easy to maintain Peter’s bat, while his mother’s crowbar took a bit of strain. He was uncertain if that was because it wasn’t a baseball bat, or if it was because it was the second weapon he was maintaining.
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Regardless, he needed to experiment further with his abilities to properly support his party as a Scholar.
But now was not the time for experimentation. They came upon a crossroads which had an arrow pointing in one direction written on the wall in chalk, then crossed out and one pointing in the other direction. Elaine had doubled back rather than return to the group when she’d come to this point, Eli realized. Sophie, who had done the same thing in her own scouting, realized this and promptly chased after her mother.
The teenagers continued to give chase.
They came upon an out of breath Elaine a moment later. She had her pistol out, and when she saw the party she stopped running.
“They’re chasing. They’re fast, they’ll catch us. Get ready,” she said.
Peter and Maia stepped up to the front, but Luke pushed his way between them.
“Let me go first,” he said. He turned to Elaine. “How far are they?”
“I don’t know, thirty seconds? Whatever you’re going to do do it fast,” she said.
“Right,” and the boy began chanting. For the first time that Eli had seen the boy trying to cast magic, he wasn’t muttering under his breath but calling out the incantations at full volume, even as he moved his hands through measured forums. The words were gibberish language as far as English was concerned, but to Eli’s surprise he understood them perfectly.
They were in Bokuto.
“Small. So small that it is beyond sight, fundamental to all that exists. Excitement. Become more excited, become one direction. Opposites attract, become one. I am north, thou are south. Lightning Strike!”
The goblins appeared down the hallway just as the teenage mage was reaching the halfway point of his spell. When the teen Mage finished casting, his palm outstretched, Eli had the distinct smell of ozone fill his nose, even as thunder filled the hallway and lightning blinded him.
The electricity arced from one goblin to the next and ripped through a full dozen of them. Even as the spell devastated their forces, however, Luke abruptly collapsed, having put all of his mana into that spell.
Blinking his eyes to see again, Eli was surprised to find that not all of the goblins were dead, and some were standing back up. Maia and Peter resumed their position in front even as Sophie stood just behind them and began firing her bow at the stunned goblins.
Junior stepped forward and took his own shot with his crossbow before stepping back to reload. Eli cursed and wondered how he could contribute. He was about to step forward into the space between the two warriors when suddenly his mother was there, pulling him by the jacket and throwing him back.
“No you don’t you idiot,” she said. “You said you belong in the back!”
The goblins, eight of them left after the lightning bolt, awkwardly charged forward. Elaine stepped forward, gun in hand.
“Don’t shoot,” Eli said. “Save your amunition. They’ve got this.”
Elaine frowned, but nodded. Another of Sophie’s arrow took one of the charging enemies before the collision between the warriors and the goblins, and then the clash happened, and then a moment later the fight was over.
The humans had perhaps taken more damage to their hearing than the goblins had managed to inflict on them in total.
The other adults caught up to them.
“Okay, that is it. We go home, now,” Jose Santos said.
“No, we don’t,” Erik Estabon said. “Don’t you hear that?”
“I can’t hear anything after the thunder,” Eli confessed.
“Behind us. There’s hollering and hooting. I don’t think they know where we are, but I can hear them. That spell must have woken up every goblin in the dungeon.”
“Sorry,” Luke said, standing from where he’d been kneeling in a recovery position. “I wasn’t thinking about how loud it would be.”
“So we can’t go forward, we can’t go back. What do we—” Eli said before he was interrupted by Elaine.
“We have to go forward. I was stupid when I got ambushed, but it’s mostly clear. Follow me.”
“But how will going forward get us out of here?” Jose objected. “We’re just getting further from the surface.”
“Shut up dad,” Maia said. “Either keep up or get left behind.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that!” he said, but she just turned to Elaine.
“Lead on, Mrs. Waters,” Maia said. “Ignore my father, he’s an idiot.”
“We don’t have time for family drama,” Eli said. “We have to get somewhere defensible so that we can kill goblins as they swarm us until we hit the one hundred mark. Elaine, please, lead the way.”
“Keep up or be left behind,” Elaine said, and she took off at a jog down the hallway.
The rest of the party fell into line behind her, jogging at a swift but manageable pace. Manageable to their post-system enhanced bodies, at least. Eli knew from PE that he would have been exhausted at this point previously, but surprisingly he was only breathing a little hard at this point.
“What is up with my bat?” Peter said at last. “It’s like a super-bat suddenly. Like someone flipped a switch and suddenly its—”
“I’m enchanting it,” Eli informed him. “Remember when I smashed the grand slam out in the back yard with my magic bat? Well, I figured out how to spread that to your bat too.”
“But it didn’t work when I tried swinging your bat,” Peter protested.
“No. It’s weird, I’ll try to explain it later,” Eli said. “But it’s easiest to enchant your bat, so I’ll try to keep it active if I can. That and my mom’s Crowbar. Sorry Maia but your club doesn’t work too well with my ability.”
“It’s fine,” she said, and he jumped a little when he realized that she was right behind him . He put on a little bit of speed to make certain he wasn’t slowing her down, and to make some distance in general. “It must be draining to keep it active all the time, so maybe only cast it if we get behind.”
“Yeah,” Eli said, although that wasn’t exactly what he’d meant.
The adults continued following after the teenagers even as they protested. Well, not all of them were protesting. Mattie was, to her surprise, finding that she felt alive in a way that she’d never experienced before. Erik, she noticed, had a determined grin on his face and his hand kept going to that massive knife of his. John Sr. and his wife Susan Campos were silent, but handling the situation with more aplomb then she’d expect of them, considering that they had just watched their youngest son be shot.
Mattie was surprised to realize that she didn’t want to turn back. She wanted to keep pressing forward.
What was that? She’d never been a risk taker before.
Before she could consider it too much, they took a sudden turn and found themselves in a wider passageway.
“This is as far as I got before,” Elaine confessed. “Do we dig in or keep going?”
“We keep going,” Eli said definitively. “There’s a stairwell hidden somewhere, and if we find it we’re golden. Or we can kill the boss, if we find him first. We only dig in if there’s no other choice.”
“Right,” Elaine said, not questioning why she was deferring to a fifteen year old kid. Something in her brain was switched into follower mode, and she kept her hand near her holster as her eyes skittered around the shadows at the far end of the hall. Nothing down there, she could see that plain as day. But her eyes didn’t like to hold still since the system had done its magic to her.
She looked behind them, and she cursed. Jose was pulling at his wife’s sleeve, trying to get a word in as everyone rushed to get to safety deeper in the dungeon. But that wasn’t why Elaine cursed.
The goblins were catching up.
Elaine pushed the idiot Jose out of the way even as she drew here pistol, took her stance and fired. Center mass, just like target practice. She didn’t feel a twinge of the guilt she’d always worried she’d feel if she’d ever been forced to use her weapon in the line of duty.
She knew one thing for certain; these white eyed, green skinned things weren’t people. They weren’t monsters either. No, she knew what a monster was, and monsters had eyes. These things were … puppets.
But they were puppets that could kill, and she had now doubt that they were dangerous.
The two front running goblins dropped with gaping holes in their chest. Elaine turned to Jose Santos and motioned for him to pick up the pace.
“You okay back there?” the kid that everyone was looking up to for some reason called back to them.
“I’ll take the rearguard,” she called. “Sophie, find us the way out of this joint.”
“Right,” her daughter called back, and Elaine felt a jolt of pride in the girl. Elaine chased after the group, occasionally kicking Jose when it looked like the idiot was going to say something, but ultimately it proved only moderately necessary. Elaine didn’t know where the kids thought they were going, since they were turning left and right haphazardly, but she was too focused on keeping an eye out for goblins chasing them to --
Abruptly, the party ahead of them stopped running. She dashed forward and saw why. A goblin dressed in spiked leather armor stood before them, a club with iron nails driven into it in his left hand and a shield in his right.
“That’s the boss,” he son said. “Like in a video game. If we kill him we win.”
Without saying another word, Elaine pulled her pistol and shot the white-eyed monster in the face.
Congratulations!
You have Defeated the Floor Boss!
Advancing to the 2 nd floor in 30 seconds.
Please secure all belongings before transference.