The door opened in front of us, and the lights lit up quickly around the room. It was much more cavernous than the previous rooms. The ceiling felt impossibly large though. There didn’t seem to be any windows in the ceiling, or any lights above the ones at our level. Nonetheless, the room was fully lit. And fully lit enough for me to see the large fat looking thing that I didn’t know the name of. Its sword was about half its height, and it only wore pants, which I was quite thankful for. It would have been very distracting, and weird seeing something that large and grotesque just swinging in the air like that.
I heard Alcoroth laugh next to me, “I’ll have to pause this one for sure.”
“Well, no shit. We should first wait for my arm to heal at least.”
I sat down in the doorway. I knew if I stepped inside then the enemy would suddenly come to life. But I watched as Fluffy just walked right on in, amazed with the giant monster thing. He pointed at it beaming with that stupid cute face of his.
I sighed and stood talking into the room as the giant thing roars.
There was a ding and I looked up to see the banner.
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A Kobold’s master
Completion Requirements:
Survive 20 minutes
Rewards will be tallied by percentage of damaged health
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The thought of just doing my best to avoid all attacks and simply survive was not something I could ever consider again. With Fluffy watching me, I knew I’d have to at least do my best.
I mean it would be a tragedy if I made that cute fluffy smiley kid sad right?
I pulled my sword out of its sheath and walked a bit further in. The roar from him and the sound of the sword lifting up through the air was worse than I was expecting. I cringed at it doing my best to ignore the sheer discomfort the noises alone gave me. Then as I watched it swing towards me a bit comically slow for some reason, I heard the noises a bit muzzled.
I leapt up quickly to avoid the swing and glanced back at Alcoroth, he must have put that sound dampening spell over my ears or something. Why was he being so nice about it?
The next swing though was much faster. I barely had time to dodge it.
How was I supposed to fight this gigantic thing? With the goblin king I made my way onto it’s back. There was no way I’d easily get him to stay still enough to land knives, and I didn’t have knives to even do that.
I glanced quickly around at his equipment. Around his wrists were heavy looking chains that swung with his arms and-
I just managed to slide underneath his blade getting closer to his body this time. With the sword he had a large reach but what was it’s close range plan.
I had to stop thinking, there’s no way it’d actually do me any good.
Around its ankles were large bracelets that had sizable fangs. I wonder what sort of creature those came from.
I charged for them. His foot moved, but it was just slow enough for me to slice off the bracelet in one go. I just nicked his skin and it was much thicker than I was expecting.
Once I even got to the point of trying to cut him, I’d need a lot of force behind it.
I picked it up and cut one piece off before I had to drag it with me to avoid his foot.
The shadow appearing above me was a great signal to dodge. Between rolling to dodge its feet and getting back up to cut away at the bracelet, I managed to get two of the bones off and enough of the rope to attach them around my wrists.
With his size it was probably best for me to try and climb up its back. It probably couldn’t swing its arms to slap me off.
With the next dodge I didn’t go too far, and leapt at its ankle with as much force as I could and managed to lodge the bones into its skin.
It may be thick but at least it won’t tear so easily. I barely got up to its knee before he swung me off and into one of the walls.
It was a jolt of pain, but I slid down quickly enough to dodge its next sword swing.
It took me about four slams into the wall before I had managed to survive a swing. Each climb had been easier though since there were already the holes I had already made before.
My next stab was easier than all the previous ones. I looked at it and realized I was at its belly. It was probably- no hopefully just filled with squishy fat. It started to twist and turn, trying to get at me. I climbed closer and closer to the middle of its back on a diagonal. I seemed to just be out of its reach.
The bones in its spine stuck out a bit and gave me a better footing for the climb and I made my way up its back surprisingly quickly.
When I finally got to its neck, I wasn’t too sure what to do. The only way to get more force would be to fall down onto it as I cut it, but this one was much larger than the goblin king. Me just jumping up would probably not give me enough force to get high enough that I could even aim for his neck well.
I saw the gap between his neck bones and just stabbed at it. The body jerked a bit, and his arm came up behind him to reach but he didn't, which gave me enough time to pull out and move away to dodge the hand that came from the front.
I fell from its shoulder and blindly jabbed with my sword. I slid a bit, but not too far thankfully.
It roared and I looked up at the hand from where I was hanging lower on its back. I remembered seeing blood squirting out the side of someone’s neck. That would be my next target.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I started to climb back up, replacing my sword with one of the bones I grabbed my hilt with my teeth. This was an awkward way to climb, but there wasn’t much I could really do in the situation. Luckily, I didn’t have too far to go.
It seemed to be completely distracted by the pain in its neck that it didn’t try to swat at me. I was at its shoulder now and looked to see what I could reach. There was just enough space under one of its fingers for me to slice my sword.
I stood up on his shoulder a bit unbalanced, dropping the teeth to hand at my side. In one movement I lunged, unsheathing my blade and slicing at the side of his neck. I couldn’t make it all the way through my movement and was blinded by the blood that squirted out.
This next jerk threw me off his shoulder, my sword still lodged in its neck.
I rolled down its arm desperately trying to lodge a tooth into his skin. Right before I fell off at his elbow, I managed to lodge one in.
I swung around and my back slammed into its elbow. I did my best to hold on despite the jerking movement
I heard the giant sword drop into the floor. So I held on fast as its arm swung up to grab at all sides of its neck.
Now its arm was more of a walkway, so I just stood up and sprinted for its neck. I needed to move his focus away from his neck so I could finish pulling my sword through it.
I held onto one of the chains on its wrist to have some stability before quickly looking around.
I looked up and saw a bulge in his wrist that looked similar to mine. Where its wrists should also not very well protected.
I moved one of the teeth to my ankle and lodged the tooth in as deep as I could so that I was still attached to its shoulder. Then I punched as hard as I could with the tooth in my hand digging into its wrist. It must have been still less painful than his neck so I dug around inside trying to pull and rip as much muscles and flesh as I could.
The wrist moved away from me, and my hand was pulled out of it. I could see my sword now and the blood spilling out of its neck. It looked much more jagged than earlier for whatever reason. I didn’t have time to think about it. I pulled my foot tooth out and ran at my sword again jumping to grab it and throw my weight onto it.
It didn’t move much further, so I jammed my foot into its cut trying to get some traction. It was slippery and my sword wouldn’t go any further.
I tried pulling it out the way it came and managed to move it a little bit, but that only sent another separate squirt of blood into my face.
I yelled, annoyed, and just dug my hands into the cut, trying to damage as much as I could. I was executing some sort of reaction, but instead I felt myself start falling. I was still holding onto his flesh so we must have been falling together.
The force at which we landed onto the floor threw me out of my grip.
There was a resounding ding in the air and the muffled noises seemed to get clearer again.
I panted sitting on the ground, I definitely broke a few bones, but they’d heal in no time at this point.
“As usual after a fight you’re a complete mess.” Alcoroth said dousing me with water.
I spit what had gotten into my mouth off and took the towel he passed to me to wipe away the rest.
“Yes, well, I managed to take him down without any of your help. So, who cares if I’m such a mess?”
“Yes, yes, good job or whatever.”
Mezu leapt onto me happily grinning.
“Did you see that Mezu? How was I?”
Mezu was grinning looking up at me and I could tell he was pleased.
There was a ding.
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Congratulations, you have done a full completion, your rewards shall now be calculated.
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“I honestly wasn’t expecting you to fully succeed.”
“Don’t worry I already knew you hadn’t expected that. It's a bit of a surprise to me too. I mean I don’t even know why I remembered that the neck is something really good to aim for like that.”
“What do you mean?”
Mezu whined a little and I took out the blade cutting off some of my fingers to give them to him.
“Well, when I was up there, some sort of memory like thing flashed in my brain for a second and I just kind of understood that it meant that if I went for that part on his neck, he would probably bleed a lot. I’m trying to think of it now, but I really can’t think about it.”
I stared down at Mezu who was happily chomping away on my fingers.
“You said you grew up in a Dwarven city, right?”
I was about to answer him, but a ding sounded.
With the completion of the first floor, your rewards have been calculated. Exit now.
A door at the far end of the room opened up. I picked Mezu up in my arms and we headed for it.
Once through the door the room looked like the one when we first entered the tower. The door behind us disappeared and there was a chest in the center of the floor. I went over to it, putting Mezu down so that I could open it. Inside was a new set of clothes and a few potions.
I changed quickly and put on the new gauntlets. Alcoroth was carefully inspecting them.
“These aren’t really the best for your reckless nature, but I suppose they’ll do for now.”
“What do you mean?”
I held them up, the finger sleeves on my left-hand gauntlet kind of flopped a bit.
“If you can’t easily use them without fingers, they’re basically useless.”
“Well, I can just cut the fingers off then, right?”
Alcoroth sighed, “I guess it’ll work this time, but it will really be pointless if they get destroyed easily.”
“Well what type of gauntlets were you thinking I could even have? Ones that magically disappear if my arm gets cut off so that I never lose them?”
“Well, technically if you have a gifted enough magician and a gifted craftsman then yes, that would essentially be possible.”
I looked over and some stairs started to spiral themselves upwards, so I pocketed the other things and headed for them.
“Yeah well, if we even managed to find two people like that what are the chances that they would even be able to do it?”
“That’s why I didn’t suggest it. I was just thinking of ones that were practically indestructible. So that no matter what happened to your hands they would be fine.”
“I don’t have the money for something like that.”
“I’m well aware of that, so do your best and maybe you’ll be rewarded with something nice. Show me those potions you got.”
I pulled out a few from my pockets, passing them to him before cutting the rest of my hand off and wrapped it up. Mezu gladly took the next snack and was happily eating while walking ahead of me.
“Well, that’s interesting.”
“What?”
“These two potions are material cleansing potions.”
“What, like cleaning my clothes or something?”
“Well, I would think that, but this one is probably a more efficient way of changing your hair color so they might just be cleansing for old dyes.”
“Why on earth is this considered a reward for doing that?”
“Your gear is more than enough; these were probably just an addition from the monarch.”
His voice sounded weird at the end of his sentence; it didn’t seem to line up with the way his lips moved.
“What? They don’t like that my hair color is all blotchy like this?”
“If you wanted to hide it, for whatever reason. It would probably be better if it wasn’t so messy, it would look more natural if it was done properly.”
“It’s not my fault I messed up doing this a few times. At a certain point it's so blotchy that it's fine if I let my original hair grow normally, right?”
Alcoroth passed them back to me.
“Do you even know why you do that to your hair?”
“I can’t remember back that far I’ve always done it.”
“Then why not just do it properly or stop?”
I really couldn’t remember the reason. Sure, it bothered me a little bit that I couldn't remember, but did it change anything either way? If I didn’t do it and something bothersome did happen that would really annoy me. Doing it properly would be nice, I guess.
“How does it work?”
“The material cleanse will work while you wash your hair. And the other one you just have to drink a bit of it regularly.”
“What if I forget then? I could leave my hair with the mixture, and it’d be fine for a while or even permanent.”
I sighed and put them away. “Let’s just not bother with it. I don’t even have my old stuff to dye my new hair anyway. Let's just keep it blotchy. I’m not outside the tower anyway, it probably doesn’t matter anymore.”
Even though I said that, I really didn’t feel too okay just ignoring it. But then again what could really happen to me? I was already being dragged up the tower after my party was murdered and my limbs can grow back apparently. What could happen from me not hiding my hair color anymore?