Chapter19

Gabri did look at all of the books in the room before he let them leave. And he wanted to steel a third of them, but after realizing that there was no way to carry that many out of the room, he reluctantly went through the pile that he’d thrown everything into and created a much smaller pile.

“There,” he said once the selection of books was down to twelve thick tombs. “You should be able to manage that.”

Eli sighed, but turned to the others. “They might have important information in them. Let’s bring them back to the safe zone. If we’re quick about it, we might only lose twenty minutes.”

The others shrugged, and they picked up the books before retreating the way they’d come.

~~~~~~~

Elaine acted as scout for the other group. She wasn’t particularly happy to be separated from her kids, but she understood the reasoning behind it. It came down to party synergy. Each party needed a scout, and while her daughter was proudly their best at that role, Elaine was second place.

She was less excited about her son wanted to go with his older sister than his mother, but she lost that argument.

As far as she was concerned, the only way to resolve this state of affairs was to get through this floor and reach the next one as swiftly as possible.

She maintained a good lead on the party she was escorting through the dungeon, but unlike Sophie she couldn’t pick the ‘right’ path to go down based on her hearing. Also unlike Sophie, she didn’t have a vanish ability. Also unlike Sophie, her weapon was loud and would draw attention if she used it.

Which is why the second party moved much slower than the first.

But that was fine, because unlike the first party, they were fighting.

The first room she found with enemies in it, she was almost discovered. One of the goblins suddenly got up to relieve itself as she was scouting around the corner and looked directly at her. She froze, knowing that movement draws the eye more than anything else, and watched as the goblin did its business then returned to its other business.

She retreated, and went to speak with the others.

After a bit of discussion, they decided to engage.

However, they didn’t just charge in blindly. It was actually John Sr. who made the first move. He had spent the previous night emptying glass bottles and filling them with solvents and fuels. With a pair of molotov cocktails in hand, he dashed around the corner where the goblins were resting and threw the improvised incendiaries into the middle of twenty of them, then ran back as the screaming began.

Elaine and Luke watched as the remainder of the group of forty goblins ran around in circles, with Elaine slowly picking off the ones that were on the outskirts with her pistol and Luke doing the same with a quick cantrip that sent out a dart of fire that seemed to burn straight through the goblins’ flesh.

It was almost too easy, and as the flames died down, that was it. The room was hot but empty of life.

They moved on to the next, but didn’t make it as the noise that they’d made drew the attention of the next room down on them. They had been anticipating this as well, and John threw out a bunch of caltrops made from twisted nails, which he’d apparently made with his son the night before. They retreated back to the entryway of the room where they’d just come from and waited for the goblins to come to them.

Which they did, of course. In waves of eight to fifteen.

Elaine calmly emptied her pistol before stepping back. One bullet per goblin. A perfect center mass shot each time, and each bullet particularly devastating.

John Sr. stood next to her with Luke. Luke continued to cast that same magic-arrow spell as before, while John Sr. shot his crossbow as fast as he could reload it.

Only once, when three of the groups coming after them arrived at the same time, did the melee members need to get involved. The caltrop-injured goblins were dancing around on injured footsies and Maia weaved between them with the Spiked Club she’d gotten from completing Floor 1. She smashed heads and grinned at the way the heads crunched beneath the heavy weapon. All the same, the club didn’t quite feel right in her grip.

And Erik … anything that came near Erik Estabon simply died. She couldn’t quite see what he was doing except for waving his machete around, but for some reason that didn’t quite make sense the machete cut a moment before he swung it at a foe. In fact, it looked like he was--

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Oh, she understood suddenly. That’s because he was several steps ahead of his body. It was his shadow that she had to watch, she realized. It was some sort of illusion. Where she saw his body was about three seconds behind where his shadow said his body was, and when the shadow of his machette connected blood would spray out of the goblins.

Dangerous, she thought to herself. Dangerous and tricky.

Then abruptly he stepped back and gasped. “I can’t keep doing that,” he admitted. “I can keep fighting, but not like that.”

“Take a breather,” she advised, since the oncoming rush of enemies had thinned out for now. Fortunately they’d been lucky and everything had been managable with the caltrops slowing the goblins down.

“Right,” he agreed. “Still getting used to having actual magic.”

“It’s a neat parlor trick,” she admitted.

They heard the laughter at the same time. They turned and saw him approach. He was a goblin, but dressed in steel armor. He laughed and stepped over the caltrops as though they were not there. Luke cast his magic arrow, and the armor turned the fire arrow aside effortlessly.

The little goblin raised his sword in challenge.

Elaine calmly finished reloading and shot him in the eye.

The goblin fell over dead.

Congratulations!

You have Defeated the Floor Boss!

Advancing to the 3 rd floor in 30 seconds.

Please secure all belongings before transference.

Before anyone could say anything, Maia sprinted forward and picked up the shortsword that the goblin had dropped. She picked it up and was in the middle of unbuckling the goblin’s sheath when the timer ran out and they were sent to the next floor.

~~~~~~~~~~

Floor 2 Summary (Hard)

Time Taken: 45:52

Rank: 72,987

Goblins Killed: 98 (Exp automatically awarded to top contributors)

Floor Bosses Killed: 2/2 (bonus points awarded)

Secret Locations Found: (1/5)

Stairwell Found: No

Loot: 50 Crossbow Bolts, Lesser Embroidery Kit, Minor Mana Potions X10, Minor Healing Potions X15, 1 box 9mm bullets (Copperhead Hollow Point), 2,800 Contribution Points (total), 21,000 experience points (total)

The menu once more appeared while they were disembodied. Eli quietly began distributing the loot. He also minimized Jose’s contribution points, since the man had done nothing but argue and literally spent the previous floor unconscious after a fight. He understood, on some level, that the man was just trying to keep his daughter safe, but at the same time Eli had simply run out of patience with the man.

He had realized, at some point, that the others didn’t see this menu at the end of the floor. Nobody had commented about the floor difficulty at least, and he’d found that nobody had realized that he’d been the one assigning loot either.

That was fine, he’d like to keep it that way if possible. Eventually someone might figure it out, but he’d just act as surprised about them not seeing the menu as he was about them seeing it. As long as they couldn’t see the difficulty, he thought he could get away with it.

He was a little nervous about doing things this way now, but he was committed and if the others found out they might doubt his leadership. So...well, for better or worse, they were going to do things the hard way.

After he’d finished distributing the loot and assigning the biases on experience and contribution points, he willed the menu away and, a moment later, his body returned. He sat up, and the others sat up around him.

“Good job killing one of the bosses,” he said to the others.

“You too,” Erik said back. “Although I’m not certain we should do that again. We had half of the dungeon coming after us and had to burn through a lot of supplies that John brought with him.”

“Right. Yeah, that’s fair,” Eli agreed. “We found these books, Gabri says they might be important. Let’s take a few hours break to examine them before we go forward. Luke, come here. This one says it’s a spellbook.”

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