30. The Echoing Abyss pt. 2

After our watery start to the Echoing Abyss, the party that was helping my mage self was forced to climb back up to the platform where the elevator usually stopped. This was more difficult for some of the party members than others. I had plenty of experience engaging in parkour ever since being introduced to the sport by Laurant, in addition to the class specific abilities [Blink] and [Slow Fall], which greatly helped me ascend. Without them, I’m not certain that it would have been possible for us to get back up without opening a ticket and requesting assistance from the .

Between my natural athleticism and my class abilities, I was able to ascend, then throw a rope to the other party members to follow behind me. It’s fortunate that Tefla happened to have six fifty foot long rope segments in his inventory, as I had never thought to bring such useful items with me into a dungeon dive before. That would change as soon as I returned to the surface, I determined.

After nearly thirty minutes of climbing, we reached the platform, and each of us let out a sigh of relief. It was time for the dungeon to begin properly. While we were still resting from the climb, however, a mist elemental unexpectedly formed behind Kordrom. I called out a warning, but the humanoid, spirit-like monster plunged a dagger into the dwarf’s back before any of us could react, then dragged him back over the ledge.

Kordrom’s cries echoed through the chasm before cutting off suddenly when he hit a ledge below. I glanced at my party interface and confirmed the worst had happened; he had died to the falling damage.

“They’re going to try to drag us back over the edge, like they did to the dwarf,” Tefla predicted. “Don’t let them.”

We retreated deeper into the dungeon, with the mist elementals appearing and disappearing to harass us along the way. Tefla had no way of damaging them. I cycled through the spells I had available to see if there were any that would work on them, but while I could force one to dissipate, it nothing I did to them did very much Damage.

“Rea, aren’t you a priestess? Can’t you use your [Turn Undead] on them or something?” Nefeline called, swinging her spear ineffectually through one of the elementals. It dissipated, but reformed seconds later a few feet away.

“I’ve tried,” Rea answered. “It’s not working. They’re not undead, they’re some sort of nature spirit, I think.”

I took a blow from one of the enemies and suffered a few hundred points of damage. It wasn’t very much, and a simple swing of my [Blade of Eclipse] forced it to once more dissipate.

“They’re not going to go away,” Tefla predicted. “They’re going to harass us the entire dungeon, but as long as we don’t let them drag us into environmental damage or something like how Kordrom died, I don’t think they’re very dangerous. I think it’s intentional. This is a gauntlet. We can’t rest unless we find a way to kill them or some sort of safe space, but if we stick around here they’ll just keep frustrating us.”

Tefla’s word’s made sense, and as he predicted the elementals continued to harass us as we moved deeper into the dungeon. They were like mosquitoes, constantly buzzing around us and vanishing the moment we tried to squash them. But Rea could heal us through them without overtaxing herself, so we proceeded.

The real threat that the mist elementals posed, however, was the distraction they caused. We were so busy dealing with them that we walked into the first boss’s room without realizing it. The cave opened up, and the ceiling above us was filled with stalactites. If we had paused to examine the room we might have seen the boss looming over us.

Abruptly, something launched itself down from above. It was a head, and it bit into my shoulder before dragging me into the air with it. I screamed as the giant snake-like appendage flung me about. I took two thousand damage from the bite itself and was continuing to take five hundred damage every time the monster swung me around, not to mention the bleed effect I had been inflicted with which would deal damage every five seconds until it was healed.

I would have died if it were not for the incoming heals I received from Rea. She managed to out-heal the damage the beast was causing me. After nearly a minute of being played with by the monster like a human rag-doll, the beast grew frustrated with its inability to kill me and flung me into the corner of the room. I landed badly, suffering more falling damage, but Rea was on it. It took me a moment to recover, but once I had, I saw that three more heads were snapping down at my party members from the ceiling of the cavern. I analyzed one of them.

Third Head of the Hydra

Hydra

Level 40 Boss

Health 98%

Nefeline was doing her best to keep Rea safe, blocking the snapping heads with his own body while somehow avoiding the monster’s attempts to latch onto her, as it had me. Unfortunately that left Tefla by himself, and the [Elf Stalker] was to busy frantically dodging the incoming strikes directed his way to even think about counterattacking.

The only positive note was that the mist elementals seemed to have stopped spawning.

The monster had made a mistake in letting me go, however. The moment I’d identified it as a hydra, I knew its weakness. While three of its heads were snapping at its party members, I began casting the cantrip for [Flame Sphere], directing it not at the rapidly moving targets harassing my friends but the ceiling itself. My first hit missed, but the light from the explosion illuminated the hydra’s main body. I followed the [Flame Sphere] up with rapid fire [Fire Volleys] directed at the hydra’s slow moving body. The first three spells fizzled out without doing much damage, but the fourth ignited the creature’s oily skin, and with a Woomph the fire spread along the slender necks of the various heads to set the entire beast aflame. Nine gods awful screeches filled the cavern as the other heads awoke from the pain and rapid health loss.

“Oh Great, now it’s on freaking fire!” Tefla shouted, dodging one of the new heads that had come to harass it. “That’s so much better Hagi, thank you for that!”

“Look at its health!” I shouted back. Tefla was too busy dodging to comply, however, and he continued to curse at me even as the heads were harassing him.

We took heavy damage over the next few moments as the nine heads snapped at us, and at each other. I was caught again and once more flung across the room, as was Rea. She was in the red when she landed, and it was only the use of an emergency self-healing spell which kept her alive as a second head snapped at her, latching onto her arm and launching her again in another direction.

She landed near me, and I managed to interpose myself between her and the beast before another head targeted her. Shouting a spell, I felt the earth responding to my command and a boulder was yanked out of the earth just in time to shield us both from another incoming head. As we were pelted with pebbles, I pulled her close beneath an alcove, limiting the angle that the heads could strike at us.

“The others,” she protested.

“Heal yourself, then worry about the rest of us,” I ordered. “Calm down and focus, Rea. You’re in the red, and if you take another hit you’re going to die.”

She nodded, and began to heal once more as I shielded her with my own body. One of the flaming heads of the hydra launched itself at us and I prepared myself mentally to take what I was expecting to be fatal damage.

The head burst into black smoke before it landed its blow. I was so surprised that it took me a moment to realize that my gambit had paid off. I analyzed the other heads and saw each of them had dipped below ten percent health due to the ongoing fire damage they were suffering, and one by one they each died as well. A moment later, the giant body of the hydra fell from the ceiling, still aflame and at twenty percent health, but without the heads to defend it, it continued to burn until it too hit zero Health and burst into black mist.

I helped Rea out of the alcove, and she promptly healed everyone back to full health. After a moment, a lootbox appeared, but nobody was quick to open it.

“What just happened?” Nefeline asked.

“That was a Cave Hydra,” I explained. “We could have killed it by killing each of its heads in turn. They respawn, but it would cause some damage to the main body each time. But I knew the faster way was to set it on fire. They’re highly flammable, and we’d effectively won the moment I managed to it.”

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“Are you kidding, kid?” Tefla said. “That thing nearly wiped us after it caught aflame!”

“It would have wiped us if I hadn’t,” I pointed out. “We weren’t ready for that fight, and Rea was at sixty percent Mana. Even if we had a full party it would have been hard to kill it by cycling through its heads one at a time. I know it was a risk, but it paid off, didn’t it?”

“He was right, Tefla,” Nefeline said placatingly. “His strategy worked, and none of the rest of us had any idea what was going on. Maybe if we’d known the fight was coming and what we were up against we could have formulated an easier plan, but instead we walked into the boss chamber and face-pulled. We’re lucky we’re still alive.”

Tefla looked like he had more to say, but he bit it down and nodded. “Well, let’s see what dropped then.”

Two weapons dropped from the encounter; a spear which replaced the one that Nefeline was wielding and a long Dagger that Tefla hummed and hawed over for several moments before deciding that it was better to break the set bonus he had on his level thirty daggers after all. The matching blades that he had been using also paired with his armor, providing him a six percent dexterity boost, but the items were lower level, and the extra dexterity on the dagger itself almost made up for the loss. Together with the higher damage rating, he thought he would be doing slightly more damage this way, and once he had a chance to purchase replacements for his set pieces he’d be even better off.

We rested for several moments after that, but before we got too comfortable the mist elementals came back to harass us once more.

The second and third bosses of the dungeons were easy compared to the first. According to the others, they were the bosses that Travelers usually faced when they challenged this dungeon. The first boss was a stone gargoyle with water elemental powers, and the second a giant salamander which burned throughout the encounter. Unlike the hydra, however, it did not take damage from its own flames, which instead served as a counter to attempts to damage it in melee, inflicting damage to those who approached it. Rea was able to heal through it with me helping to dowse the flames using ice and water magic.

A chatroom with the other me’s opened at a convenient time while we were recuperating from the salamander, and I tuned in to read what they had been up to.

Hail

How are the rest of you doing?

Lord

How is the visit to the lawyer?

Hail

It’s as bad as your job, except that we understand even less of what’s going on. He’s a smart guy though, and he’s helping us figure out a path forward. We may have a way to pursue Nial on Earth. And to make things better for Charity and Prosperity. It’s too complicated for me to explain so for now just take my word for it.

Lord

I suppose we’ll all remember it tomorrow anyway. Anyway, today is as boring as every other day of being lord has been. I finalized the scheduled battlegrounds. They’ll start dropping in three days our time.

Hail

Yeah. About that. In order to accomplish our goals on Earth, we’re going to have to start selling a lot more cores to Travelers.

Lord

Didn’t we just make a lot of money with the last five we sold?

Hail

Lawyers are expensive on Earth. Mage? How are you doing?

Mage

Well, when the chatroom opened up I called a break, but I think we’re about two thirds of the way to the final boss in the second. I managed to get Nefeline and Tefla in my group, and a pug healer who is pretty decent. There was another [Mage]-like class with us, but he died earlier and we’ve been on our own since then. Still, we’re doing pretty well and I think we’ll clear the dungeon no problem. It’s really pissed off at us though since I announced that I planned to destroy it.

Duelist

I’m destroying a Lair; should I find a random dungeon to bust instead?

Hail

Keep doing what you’re doing, Duelist. We can’t just flood the market with cores either. Kellen is helping us come up with a strategy. It turns out it’s a good thing that our Hagi alias leaked. We’re going to start selling opportunities to quest, bust dungeons, and destroy lairs with him. Then we’ll turn around and sell the cores we get from doing so. But like I said, we’ll remember all of this tomorrow. It’s better to plan in the mornings than it is to change what we’re doing halfway through the day.

Archer

I think I’m going to change into Hagi and announce myself in LFG. I’ve run out of quests to screw up in my area, and I want to see what my damage is like in a group where I have someone tanking for me.

Lord

I don’t think that needs a vote, Archer.

Archer

I’m just saying since it’s a change of plan and the chatroom is open anyway.

Hail

Good luck, Archer. I’m looking forward to remembering your today, tomorrow.

I closed out of the chatroom and glanced around, expecting the mist elementals to begin forming any moment. I was right, and Nefeline promptly called an end to our rest, pushing us to move forward, deeper into the caverns.

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