“Oh no, I...” I didn’t even bother finishing the thought as I ran for my life, urging Alsvartr to fly as quickly as she could away. Ether was heavier than air, and would sink to the ground. However, just like smoke rises in the air, smoke could also be swirled downward. The same was true for ether. The movement of the approaching mercenaries might cause the ether to rise up. At that time, the ether would be ignited by the fire from the torches.

It was at that moment that a giant explosion rocked the tunnel. A blast of air knocked me flying, sending me into a nearby wall. I could tell I lost more than a few health points from the impact. “Son of a gnome,” I muttered in pain, holding my side. Luckily, I had been able to run far enough away and made it to a curve in the tunnel to avoid most of the blast wave.

My ears were ringing so badly I could barely hear the screams and shouts from the mercenaries. “Dang,” I said, wanting to stomp my foot but worried the impact would hurt a lot. Why hadn’t I thought about their torches? My plan had been to wait until most of the mercenaries were in the ether gas, perhaps even falling asleep. At that time, I would ignite the ether gas with a fire bolt. I had completely forgotten that the mercenaries were carrying torches that would cause the explosion prematurely.

“Still, I must have gotten at least a few of them, right? System, please show me the experience I gained,” I said, wanting to see if it would show up. I smiled when the information popped up, quite pleased that I could now see how much experience I had gained and how much each creature was worth.

Experience Gained: Killed 9 Creatures: (7 x 50 xp) + (2 x 100 xp) = 550 xp

While I was watching the screen, a few more of the low-level mercenaries died, adding to my experience. However, I was still annoyed. I must have gotten really lucky last time. Although I had slain more people than last time, I had gained a lot less experience. Either that, or I had been given some bonus experience for killing above my level. Another reason might be because my level had increased.

While I knew that I should be happy, I wasn’t for some reason. I had to resist the impulse to run to their dead bodies and beat them until more experience was given. It definitely made me appreciate how lucky I had been earlier. The last time I didn’t have to do much at all and had gained a lot of experience. This time, I had planned ahead and killed almost twice as many adventurers and gotten a lot less for my efforts. Saying I was annoyed would be a vast understatement.

I was also disgusted by the fact that while my ambush worked, I failed at ambushing the majority of the approaching enemies. The fact that I only received half the experience also annoyed me. Despite that, I had to admit that Alsvartr had helped me find the mercenaries as well as the ambush site. Because of this, I tried to ignore the pain of losing my precious experience.

“Now what do I do?” I was stumped. Going back to the bridge was probably the best option. However, curiosity was getting the better of me. After all, I was so close. All I had to do was peek around the bend in the tunnel to see what happened. Finally, unable to resist, I crept closer and looked. The fact that the screams and yelling had stopped sealed my decision.

“Interesting,” I muttered as I saw a few bodies whose clothing was still on fire. However, that was all I saw. The mercenaries had retreated back up the passageway. Apparently, they were regrouping and deciding what to do.

“No, I really shouldn’t,” I muttered, trying to decide if I should try filling the area with more ether. Of course, I wouldn’t while the flames were still burning though. Taking a moment, I cast the Prestidigitation cantrip and put out the fires.

While I was thinking, I decided to heal myself before they came back. “Heillmér,” I said, casting the spell. Even the temporary health points from my Deathbringer feature had disappeared when I hit the wall. In fact, I might have died if I didn’t have those temporary health points.

Almost immediately, a wave of healing warmth spread across my chest. Feeling a surge of invincibility, I decided to go ahead and start breathing more ether into the tunnel ahead of me. Hopefully the mercenaries would hesitate long enough or take long enough to regroup to give me time to fill the tunnel again.

Luck didn’t happen to be on my side. Before I was able to breathe out any ether at all, a single mercenary approached down the tunnel. Curious, I decided to use my eldritch mind powers to see what he was thinking. After a few seconds, I smirked when I realized the mercenaries thought they had run into a pocket of methane gas. While they were almost positive that the gas had burned off in the explosion, they were sending the scout ahead just in case.

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I watched as he reluctantly pulled out a torch and then took out a tinderbox. Holding his breath, he shivered and used the flint and steel to light the torch. Since the ether had already exploded, nothing happened. Breathing out in relief, the scout hurried back up the tunnel to rejoin his comrades.

Not sure how much time I had, I started filling the tunnel with ether again. Fortunately, I was lucky this time. Apparently, the mercenaries were taking a short break to recuperate. This gave me more than enough time to fill the tunnel with ether once again. In fact, I filled it up so much that I had to keep backing up higher into the tunnel because the ether had started to reach me.

Finally, I decided enough was enough. I knew that I might have gone overboard. In fact, I was a little worried that if the mercenaries came down with a torch again, I might not survive the blast. Because of this, I stopped breathing ether into the tunnel and started looking for the best hiding spot that would allow me to avoid an explosion but also see the mercenaries approaching.

A few minutes after finding an outcropping, I heard movement in the tunnels again. A short time later, I saw a glow of light. However, this time the glow didn’t flicker like a torch. It was strong and steady. Smiling, I realized they were nervous about more explosions and were using Light spells instead of torches.

“Oh my,” I muttered, “you guys made a huge mistake.” The cantrip I had temporarily learned could be cast from over a hundred feet away. Combined with the huge area I had covered in ether, most of the mercenaries would be in the blast range. My only worry was that the ones at the front of the column might fall asleep from the ether, which might warn the rest about the danger.

From what I knew, ether usually took a while to knock someone out. In fact, that was one of the reasons why chloroform ended up replacing ether. The lizards, spiders, and bugs I had used my ether breath on before had been small, which might account for why they had been affected immediately.

Of course, there had to be more to it. How useless would a dragon breath weapon be if it took ten minutes of breathing to knock someone out? Puzzled, I decided I definitely needed to give the matter more time for consideration. After all, I needed to know how to utilize my breath weapon to have the most bang for the buck.

Perhaps the ether I created was like a fire caused by a red dragon’s flame. The flames would linger even after the breath had finished. Perhaps the initial breath would knock people out. However, ether didn’t just immediately evaporate and fade away. More than likely, it would stick around, although without the initial immediate sleep effect. Nodding to myself, I decided that explanation was good enough for the moment. I could always refine my thoughts later.

While I was thinking, the mercenaries had continued to advance down the tunnel. In fact, some of them had even started to climb out of the dungeon. Deciding it was time, I used the Fire Bolt cantrip to throw a ball of fire toward the group and then immediately hid behind the outcropping of rock. While I hadn’t targeted anyone, I didn’t have to.

An extremely large explosion rocked the tunnels. In fact, I almost left a wet spot on the floor. I was certain that if I had been standing in the open, I would have died. I even thought I had caused an earthquake at first. While this wasn’t true, the explosion was definitely frightening even though I was behind shelter.

Surprisingly, there were actually a few mercenaries who managed to survive the explosion. Most of them were unconscious. The few who were still conscious were as badly wounded as the others, but were probably a slightly higher-level and so had more health points.

Taking a moment to send a command to my familiar, I started bombarding every mercenary who survived with Fire Bolt and had Alsvartr use Sonic Blast on the survivors as well. I didn’t want to give any of them a chance to wake up or heal.

Turning to Alsvartr, I said as I threw another Fire Bolt at an almost dead mercenary, “We must allow these brave warriors to join their friends in the realm of their gods. Yes, we are doing this to put them out of their misery. This isn’t for the experience at all.” Alsvartr just ignored me, as if I was rambling in some foreign language, which was almost true.

I decided to wait a moment, allowing those who lingered near death to die. A notification appeared, but I ignored it. I was more interested in the experience I had gained. “Show me the experience I gained,” wanting to see just how much experience I had gained. I was certain that I would see a surge of experience that would prove I had taken care of the mercenaries, or at least that I had taken care of the majority of them.

Experience Gained: Killed 78 Creatures: (36 x 25 xp) + (25 x 50 xp) + (14 x 100 xp) + (3 x 200 xp) = 4150 xp

Seeing that the experience gained was split between Alsvartr and myself again, I had to sit down and put my hands on my face. Maybe a few years down the road, I would look back on what I did over the next few minutes and laugh. However, the little kobold throwing a temper tantrum in the tunnel while laying on his back, screaming profanities, and cursing the loss of the experience was something I would never share with anyone. I knew I was acting crazy but couldn’t stop myself.