The lost adventurers had taken the main path through the floor, which he followed carefully, before moving onto an obscure branch path about halfway down the trail. The trio had elected to map out an unexplored portion of the floor, which meant that he needed to follow their planned trail into uncharted waters. He mostly fought his way through Lizardman and Hobgoblins, a larger and more muscular version of the goblins on the Upper floors. None of these humanoids could unnerve Adama, since he could always lean on his Endless Sword to clear them out if he needed to.
The only interesting events of his jaunt through the charted portion of the 24th floor was when a Lizardman dropped one of their scales, adding to his progress on one of the quests, and his encounter with a Sword Stag.
The quadrupedal creature resembled its mundane counterpart on the surface, besides the same unnerving red eyes that all monsters had, and its strange looking horns. These assets were larger and more elaborate than a normal stag’s, towering far above where normal horns would have stopped, and they were made of a reflective, metallic substance. It truly looked like the stag had attached several wide and pointed sword blades to the crescent moon body of its vicious looking horns.
The monster let out a deep low as it charged Adama, head bowed. It used the horns both to gore and to slice, and the adventurer was forced to parry a few wide strikes from the beast’s horns when it failed to run him down. Like most monsters, however, it was more instinct and power than it was skill, and Tim found it relatively easy to turn aside its hits without getting his sword caught in the nooks of its horns. That was the more dangerous threat of this enemy’s idiosyncratic blades, but so long as he held onto his weapon, Tim didn’t have anything to fear from this unusual monster. Once he had taken its measure, Adama exploited an opening and opened its throat. It didn’t give him the horn he was looking for, but he still had plenty of time.
Once Adama entered the uncharted piece of the 24th floor, his search got more complicated. No tracks for his quarry were forthcoming, and he stared at a fork in the road with some consternation. If he took the wrong route here, chances were he would never find those three. There was no room for looking around aimlessly and wasting time, so he examined his choices here carefully. The leftward path sloped steadily downward, and when he looked down it he saw nothing but darkness. The rightmost path curved sharply after only 50 meters, such that the only thing you saw when you looked down it was the wooden wall. However, when he examined that path and focused, Adama realized that he could hear the faint gurgling of a stream.
Running water was rare, but not unheard of in the Dungeon. Faced with a choice, that party would probably choose to investigate this life-giving resource, rather than continuing down the more uninviting and dark path. Armed with this simple deduction based on human psychology, he took the rightmost path. Adama followed the twisting path through a few more rooms until he found the elusive spring. It was a tiny thing, near the northwest corner of a larger room. It was fed by an aperture in the wall nearer to the ceiling, the stream trickling down the wall and into the shallow basin below. Adama was irritated to see that there were now four branching paths out of the room, two on either side of the clearwater wellspring.
An examination of the grassy floor, however, yielded a bit of hope. An empty potion bottle was dropped right on the leftmost bank of the pool, nestled within the low scrub of ubiquitous greenery. Adama plucked it out and held it up to the light. The glass was intact and rather clear, indicating that it had been dropped here rather recently. That made sense, since this was uncharted territory, and it was confirmation that the lost sheep had passed through this way. His instinct having proven correct, Adama now glared at the two leftmost paths. Since he found the potion on the left, he would try out these paths first.
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The first path he followed for some time and only found several gangs of monsters for his trouble. Tim kept searching for more signs that his quarry had passed through here. He found nothing but disappointment, and eventually hit a dead-end room populated by a single Mammoth Fool. The great hunk of burgundy fur reminded him of a pet of an old friend of his, the Beast King. It was a massive and well-muscled mountain of death, with curved ivory tusks and eyes filled with hostile intent. It trumpeted angrily when Adama stepped into its territory, but he instantly turned around.
The Mammoth Fool could be a legitimate threat to Adama, and he had no reason to pick a fight with this dangerous beast. He had quickly scanned that dead end room and determined that his targets were nowhere to be found. If they had come this way, then they had certainly backtracked after coming to this far. Tim did as much, and eventually came back to the source of water. Sighing at the wasted time, he quickly tried out the other path, hoping that he wasn’t going on another wild goose chase.
After another sequence of passages leading to more rooms, Adama was eventually forced to slow down. His keen ears picked up a familiar buzzing sound from far away, and he slowed to a crawl as he crept towards the source. The noise was so loud it was almost like a living thing, the ever-present BUZZZZ echoing down the passageway in an earsplitting roar. He frowned a little as he grew nearer to the source. Adama suspected he knew what the cause of the noise, and he didn’t like the implications.
Eventually, he reached the sound’s origins, and peered inside one of the largest rooms he had ever seen. It was a massive underground cylinder, with a single open passage on the other side. The room was absolutely swarming with Deadly Hornets, kicked up into a furor and flying around the room in an endless enraged circle. On the ceiling hung a large blackish-purple figure that resembled a pinecone. It stretched seven meters in length, and occasionally belched out another Deadly Hornet to join the swarm below. Where it was getting the resources to do that was anyone’s guess, but it had thoroughly suffused the room with its lethal progeny and turned this route into a death trap. Adama had decided to turn back when he heard the shout.
On the rightmost side of the wall was a tiny crevice, an opening in the wood that could host roughly 3 or 4 people huddled tightly together. It was small enough that Adama had overlooked it in his initial snapshot of the room, but in his haste he hadn’t seen the rectangle of dark black that covered the opening of this hole. This ebony barrier was a large tower shield of high quality, and it was forced to endure the occasional strikes of the bug monsters that circled overhead. Right as Adama began to turn around, the stout and burly adventurer holding this shield had hit his limit. With the shriek of metal and a cry of anguish, this sturdy fighter was forced to pull back when a hornet’s stinger finally pierced his powerful defenses and skewered his arm. This would have left the comrades he was protecting open to attack, were it not for the chanting of the mage behind him. Right as the warrior fell back, a shaky but determined feminine voice called out the final line of her chant:
“Rock of Ages!”
Quickly, the opening was covered by a translucent gray magical barrier. More hornets glanced off this new barrier, and Tim could have sworn he heard that same feminine voice cry out softly in exertion. Mind working quickly, he figured out exactly what was happening here. Somehow, at least two of the three lost adventures had found themselves caught in an impossible and lethal situation. The fixture above was a Bloody Hive, the second most dangerous monster on the 24th floor. Often compared to a Floor Boss, this creature could spawn Deadly Hornets indefinitely. In a space this open, where a large crowd of flying enemies could maneuver freely, they were especially dangerous. The duo, or perhaps the trio, hiding in the crevice were almost certainly the kids he was looking for. They could limit how many enemies could attack them at once by hiding in that opening, but the moment they emerged they would be sitting ducks. They wouldn’t stand a chance. If they simply stayed where they were, however, they were sure to run out of resources and defensive measures soon. From what Tim could see, they were already on their last legs.
Truth be told, even higher-level adventurers would have serious trouble with a Deadly Hornet swarm that large. This room was the quintessential death trap. If Adama had simply documented this state of affairs and slipped away, even the Guild couldn’t blame him and likely wouldn’t penalize him, so long as he could get independent verification.
“Hear the song of a faraway land, a dance of a thousand blades…”
With no more than a breath of hesitation, Adama began muttering before he burst into the room. He had started his chant from behind cover, but he wanted to draw the attention and the proximity of many enemies as possible before he finished his spell. The hive mind undulated a little, processing the presence of this new threat, before circling around to swarm the interloper. Adama danced around and slashed his way through the foremost attackers, but they were moving to surround him. Just as they did, and began to close in for the kill, the swordsman grinned savagely as he reached the final line of his spell:
“Endless Sword!”
Adama's sword rang with the opening bell of the fight.