The advisor was stunned. Simply stunned. Well, frankly, everyone was, but he, as the most intelligent member of the present goblins, could barely stop himself from collapsing out of pure shock. The reason for his current look was the state of the remaining teams which returned. Simply put, there were very few teams remaining. Nearly all of their berserker groups had been wiped out, except for one who had the sense to return. When he arrived, he had been a babbling mess about how he had gotten extremely angry and confused for no reason, attacking his group in a frenzy after mistaking them for enemies as the scout had launched stones at him. The groups that had tamers in them reported their wolves and scouts encountering a mesmerizingly beautiful butterfly, before they had been targeted by spiders which had confusing venom. They had managed to kill the spiders without much delay due to the teamwork of the wolves and scouts, and had continued to push forward…until they had encountered a 30-foot wide river which rushed from one end of the Dungeon to the other, preventing further investigation.
The Dungeon seems to be intelligent…At least, many times more intelligent than I expected a dungeon to be… The advisor shook his head in confusion, before turning to the goblin chief.
“We should move out then, chief. Staying here is a waste of time if we can’t push further in, and the goblins can’t cross that river without my help.” The advisor decided to voice his opinion, glancing at the remaining members of the now much-smaller army.
“Mm. MOVE OUT!” The goblin chief grunted his approval, before hollering out. The cheers of dozens of goblins and the howls of wolves resounded throughout the area, before the goblin army began to move out. Their numbers might have been depleted after their probing, but they were now coming with vengeance. Unknown to the others, a purple-skinned goblin burst into the dungeon a few minutes later, a wide smile adorning his face.
Kuraura snuck in! Dungeon! Please make Kuraura stronger! With that, the purple-skinned goblin followed the mass of footprints his brethren left behind, trailing behind the goblin army.
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Is that a chief too? Dylan had long given up on trying to determine the leader of the goblins. He had obviously caught Kuraura’s entrance into the dungeon, given the timing and oddity of the lone intruder. However, that intruder had swaggered into the dungeon in a carefree manner, and alone to boot. His strange purplish skin and toothy grin definitely made him seem like an evolution of a normal goblin… Why would they leave that potential fighting force outside? Have they underestimated me? Or is that goblin a trump card? I hope they underestimated me…
After carefully thinking about the situation, Dylan gave orders to some monsters, then turned to the second-half of the forest cave. He had decided to make traps while his monsters and the river stalled for time. Simply put, a trap didn’t have to actually be too well thought out or look nice, it just needed to be effective. Thus, Dylan opted to use his mana to carve out small pits in the ground. He chose to make them anywhere from 2 feet to 10 feet in diameter, ranging in depth from 2 to 10 feet as well. He wanted to use the traps to disrupt opponents during a battle, not outright kill them. Since his monsters liked to attack by dropping out of the trees, the traps were less likely to affect them anyway, and they could easily climb out in the event of an accidental activation. Dylan supposed he could have set a [Dungeon Law] to prevent dungeon-allied organisms from triggering traps, but he wanted to save the mana for now, in the case of an emergency. Looking at the random pits scattered throughout the second half of the forest cave with no rhyme or reason, Dylan smirked mentally. At the very least, someone would be thrown off after accidentally stepping into a pit. Dylan had missed steps on the stairs before, and he knew how it felt. Imagine that happening while fighting off a centipede as long as you. After overlooking his traps, Dylan decided to cover all of them in thin layers of dirt, grass, vines and ivy in an attempt to conceal them. With that, he gathered more monsters in the second half as he watched an experimental group of monsters attack the army.
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The goblin army was marching through the forest, with no attempt to conceal their assault. They smashed apart shrubs and trampled grass in their haste, hooting and howling as they scanned the forest for monsters to fight. The goblin advisor warily glanced through the forest. Even as he was situated in the back, with some goblin warriors and the chief nearby, he couldn’t help but be wary. From his previous owner’s notes, he had read a small amount about dungeons. According to the notes, dungeons were living beings too which ran on mana. The monsters within them could range in power and abilities depending on the dungeon’s capabilities and surrounding creatures. They often had monsters within which resembled fauna found in the area they were located in. However, this was where the notes stopped being useful. Dungeons, although living, operated on instinct for the most part, unless they were incredibly powerful dungeons. The advisor had no reason to believe that this was a high levelled dungeon, as the only reports of monsters were those weak enough to be killed by normal goblins. The only oddities were the strategies the monsters seemed to possess, targeting the berserker groups like that. In addition to the whole forest area. Most dungeons did not seem to have big, expansive forests within them, instead normally containing sprawling caves with moss. Dungeon’s with these traits were all high-leveled dungeons which had some level of sentience. Hopefully that wasn’t the case with this one. The advisor snapped out of his thoughts as he heard shouts and screeches from the goblins up ahead.
Shouts and cries of enemies ahead radiated throughout the army, and many goblins ran forward in excitement. Even the chief stepped forward a bit, but stopped to look at the advisor with a measure of concern, as the advisor would be defenseless without him there.
“Just go. I need to observe.” The advisor sent the chief on his way before analyzing the fight. From what he noticed, he saw a meager few monsters, they probably equaled the remaining goblin army one to one. There was no way the dungeon monsters could win…unless…
“Nuu?!” The advisor leaped to the side with surprising agility, tumbling onto the ground before rising up shakily. The centipede which had leapt at him rose up as well, hissing in anger. Realizing, the goblin advisor looked up to the trees, and saw a mass of shadows writhing above him. Sprays of acid splashed down towards him as centipedes dropped down from the trees…
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Complete failure… Dylan sighed as he watched the army continue nearly unabated through the forest. Even after all that effort… To start, Dylan had mobilized the centipedes and heavy bombardier beetles he had left behind to engage the group, using a majority of them in an all-out head on assault, with the centipedes leading the charge as the bombardier beetles sat in the trees. He had pulled a smaller group of centipedes and bombardier beetles to attack the cloaked goblin, thinking to kill off the ‘small chief’ first. Over a dozen monsters had attacked that goblin, and they had all died. That damned goblin could manipulate the earth! Spikes made of stone had impaled the centipedes which approached, while stones had formed mid-air out of magic circles, flying at high speeds to strike down his heavy bombardier beetles with frightening accuracy.
How did he even do that? Dylan warily watched the advisor. Clearly, he’s a type of mage, but I didn’t even hear him chant! How is this fair? Wait a minute… Dylan used [Dungeon Watching] on the advisor, concentrating before realizing something was wrong. He’s worth 4 invaders?!