"Thanks, man, helped me out of an awkward situation. The slot is in three days. The other members of my group have already left town, no one will bother you," Rick said while putting the money in a small bag. He shook Elijah's hand, said goodbye, and headed for the stairs.
Elijah also left the building and spent most of the next three days honing his skills and practicing reading. He also tested his new ability [Wooden Thorn] and became more familiar with [Devastating Blow]. On the morning of the third day, he was back in the Eternal Flame building, this time standing in front of the entrance to the Rift.
Chapter Begin
The rift was located at the end of a large hall inside the headquarters. True to the concept of the Eternal Flame guild, dozens of torches hung on both sides of the aisle and Elijah had to go past dozens of guards who stood along the path leading to the rift.
Similar to the other rift Elijah had seen on Cloudrest, the floating island, the rift in front of him was surrounded by a constant flash of a few spatial tears. It looked as ominous as the other rift but Elijah knew more about rifts now and had delved into one. He didn’t hesitate as he approached the spatial tear and the two guards clad in blood-red armor standing around it.
Their eyes rested on Elijah while they blocked the entrance to the rift with their spears. Elijah wasn’t experienced enough to tell if they were Tier 3 or 4 but they definitely felt stronger than him. He would have guessed Tier 3 but wouldn’t bet his money on it.
When he was only a few feet away, Elijah flashed a small badge that he had received ten minutes ago at the counter he bought the slot from. The guards looked at the small badge and after a moment they lowered their weapons, allowing Elijah to enter the rift. Elijah wasn’t sure how the whole system worked but the badge apparently was a one-time entry permit which signaled the guards that he was approved to enter the rift at this particular day and time.
Elijah handed the badge over and nodded at the guards in greeting. They didn’t bother to talk with him and one of them simply motioned Elijah to enter the rift instead of returning the nod. He followed suit.
You’ve entered a rift. Welcome to The Orc’s Stronghold.
A similar message to the one he had received when entering his first rift appeared and Elijah dismissed it after reading.
He took in his surroundings as he readied himself to fight at a moment’s notice. The Eternal Flame guild had warned him repeatedly to not delve into the tier 2 rift alone while only being Tier 2 himself as the mortality rate was significantly higher for solo delvers. They even offered to find him a team of delvers who were looking for new members but Elijah declined all offers. He preferred to move alone for now. When he became more familiar with the world, perhaps he would form his own team. His minions would suffice until then.
Seems like a cave. Elijah thought as his eyes wandered around the room. He found himself inside a dimly lit chamber, decorated with crude symbols all over the walls. The room he stood in was rather small, about the size of his room in the inn. A single exit led out of the room and deeper into the cave system.
Elijah wasted no time and only skimmed over the symbols depicting what were probably orcs fighting against different kinds of beasts before he left the starter room. The ground was uneven, covered in moss, and swallowed the sound of his footsteps as Elijah set off to explore the tunnels. Gnarled roots and thin twigs lay all around him and as he moved forward, Elijah collected all the wood he could to increase the size of his minions. He decided to merge Root with Timber, leaving him with only one minion that reached up to his hips by the time he reached the next chamber.
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The room resembled the other in size and provided enough space for the group of five green creatures Elijah could see to comfortably huddle together and poke something with sticks on the floor. He couldn’t help but watch them for a few moments. What are those? Goblins? I heard that there would be goblins inside this rift but I didn’t expect them to be this ugly.
The goblins weren’t only short, reaching merely up to Elijah’s waist, but they were ugly as hell too. They reminded him of bats with their unproportional small eyes and huge pointy ears at the side of their head. Their snout-like noses added the last bit of ugliness to their image and Elijah could have heartily done without the sight of their sexual organs and behinds. And the smell of their ficals that were distributed in the room.
I hope the whole dungeon is not covered in shit. He took a step into the room and activated [Wooden Thorn]. The wooden spike shooting out of his palm impaled the side of one of the goblins and wounded it before they had noticed Elijah. Another shot followed and impaled a second one by the time they whirled around and leaped at him, their angry screeches filling the cave.
Root stormed forward, using its wooden fists to smash one of the leaping goblins out of the air. The monster crashed against the cave’s wall and started biting and scratching like a mindless beast as the minion delivered blow after blow against it.
The two last goblins were about to land on Elijah who took a step forward and imitated Root, using his mace to send one of the two flying into the wall. Elijah stepped to the side and back to evade the attack of the last goblin before he hardened his wooden fist and activated [Devastating Blow] just before his fist connected with the goblin’s head.
Elijah had already tested the skill, but seeing the goblin catapult into the wall was another level of satisfaction. Five streams of essence flowed into him and he collected all the wood in the room to increase Root’s size further. Looks like the noise didn’t attract other goblins.
The room acted as a stopover and the way forward branched off into three. Elijah glanced at each of the stony paths winding through the cave before he shrugged and stepped into the one on his right. It didn’t matter much which way he chose since he would try to explore the cave as extensively as possible anyway.
Another goblin blocks Elijah’s way through the rift not a minute later. Elijah didn’t even stop as he sent Root forward to take care of the monster but it looked like the lone goblin acted as a vanguard of a constant stream of goblins attacking him.
Elijah fought his way through the tunnels, clearing out several rooms in the process and accumulating more essence with each goblin he killed. Root also grew to the size of Elijah as they dove deeper inside and eventually split in two, to provide wood for Timber to join them. The second minion only increased the speed at which they were killing goblins but the little monsters were numerous and compensated their individual weakness with their number.
To Elijah’s advantage, the pathways through the rift narrowed as he and his minions progressed and acted as a filter for the huge amount of goblins attacking them. Only two or three were able to attack them simultaneously, preventing Elijah from being overrun. While Elijah couldn’t use his mace in the increasingly tight passages, he was able to make good use of his heavy limbs to crush the goblins under their weight.
It became evident that the small size of the goblins was as much an advantage as it was a detriment against Elijah. The narrow path forward eventually forced Elijah to crouch or even crawl at some spaces while the goblins were able to move more freely thanks to their smaller sizes. Without his minions, Elijah would have had a hard time, going through these pathways on his own. Fortunately, the goblins only came from the front. Despite his constant checking, Elijah never had a goblin attacking him from the paths he came from.
Thank god, these paths aren’t covered in shit. Elijah crawled over the corpse of yet another goblin. He had thought about going back the same way he came from when the path became so tight he barely had space to crawl but he wasn’t even sure he would manage to reach the entrance of the rift after having gone through the jumbled system of tunnels. The growing feeling of claustrophobia wasn’t helping.
With deep and steady breaths, Elijah crawled, crouched, and moved forward only to let out a deep sigh after what felt like hours of confinement. After some point, the number of goblins lessened the further he advanced and Elijah knew he reached the end of the tunnel system when he crawled out into a room that was more spacious than all the others he had been to before.