Chapter 224. Haunted Mansion.
Breaking the seal on my instructions caused a system prompt to appear.
You have been tasked by your summoner to compete in a contest along with other summoned beings. Your ranking for the summoning will be determined by your performance. Twelve other contestants are participating in this event.
Your instructions are as follows.
1. Place all your gear other than normal, unenchanted clothing into the marked container. It will be returned to your personal space and will await your completion of this summoning. Should you attempt to leave this room with any gear equipped, you will automatically be assigned a performance rating of Unacceptable.
2. Explore the wing of the estate you are currently in. Attempt to find the marked exit. As you explore, be on the lookout for gear and equipment to help you survive.
3. Engage and destroy any other creatures or participants you run across. At certain points, you may encounter one of your summoner’s household staff. You must not, under any circumstances, harm an employee of the summoner. The employees are there to offer you special tasks that will result in appropriate rewards.
4. Please be advised that just as there are rewards for exceptional performance, there are penalties for poor performance that may follow you past the current summoning.
5. Beware, if you value your life, do not go into the basement. Whatever happens to you in the basement will be replicated back on your home world.
Wow, creepy. So, it looked like I had to escape this haunted mansion looking wing of the estate. Before I could do that, I had to dump any gear I had on me. An old wooden chest that I could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago sat with its lid open in the corner of the room.
Since it was the only container in the room, I began to unload my gear into it. I was still a bit freaked out by the last two points of my instructions. Somehow, the system was going to allow poor performance to follow me back home. I also needed to make sure that whatever happened, I avoided going into the basement.
There were twelve other summoned beings participating in whatever this was, and I made lucky number thirteen. I had no way of knowing what the other summoned beings had for their classes, but I had to think that my Foe Commander class would give me a leg up against most others. I began to summon my minions, starting with the drone.
After everything but my clothes were dropped into the chest, it slammed shut on its own, nearly taking off one of my fingers and almost giving me a heart attack. There was a speed component to this summoning, but I wasn’t going to exit the room until the whole team was assembled. Once the final member of the crew was summoned, I had Blieek take point.
It was one of the formations for house clearing I’d practiced with the soldiers. Blieek was my least valuable minion and served the role of mobile, meat-based trap detector. Beside him, Khurr walked, scanning the floor, walls, and ceiling for any traps or possible ambushes.
Behind Khurr and Blieek, I walked with our healer, Elida. Directly behind us was the drone, using its stealth mode as much as it could. The stealth field generator couldn’t run continuously, but the down time was only a minute, giving him concealment about two thirds of the time. The goblin trio were the tail end of our little warband. They would provide a solid defense if we were attacked from the rear but were also fast enough to respond anywhere in the formation that I needed them too.
Right outside the door to my room, the mansion looked different than I remembered after having walked in just a few minutes ago. There must have been magic, and some other system shenanigans going on here. The hallway to the right of me ended at another old, battered door. To my left, the hallway stretched down and then turned right.
First things first, we needed to clear the door to the right. Khurr gave the door a once over, nodding toward me to confirm he didn’t detect any traps. He then moved to cover the other direction with his crossbow as the goblins stacked on the door. They were my breaching team, and at my command, Glurk with one of his heavy chopping blades in one hand, opened the door with the other.
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Glamb led the way, his spear leveled toward any threat. A flash of light and the sound of electrical zap were my first indication that something was wrong. The other goblins piled in and shrieked their high-pitched war cries as they fought with something inside.
Waving the drone in ahead of me, I peeked into the room to see what we were up against. An elf woman stood with her eyes closed inside a protective bubble of mana. Glem and Glamb were stabbing and slashing at the shield while Glurk fired arrow after arrow into it.
With no weapon or shield, I wasn’t all that useful in this situation, so I entered the room and kept my head down as the rest of the team attacked. The elf woman’s shield flickered briefly, and she looked out at our group. Lightning played across her fingers, and she pointed at Glem, unleashing a crackling bolt of energy at him.
The blast hit Glem, knocking him back, and causing his entire body to spasm. Elida fired off a heal, and I dropped a Health Bloom over the goblins who never relented in their attacks. Noticing me, the elf seemed confused for a moment before she smiled and began to build up electrical energy again.
“Blieek, run to the corner of the room!” I shouted, watching the diminutive goblin follow my orders exactly. As the elf woman raised her hand to fire off another bolt of lightning, I activated Switch. It was a bit disorienting, suddenly finding myself near the corner of the room where Blieek had been standing. Looking back, I could see the little guy eat the entire lightning bolt that should have been targeted at me.
Elida looked over at him, shaking her head to indicate she couldn’t help him before continuing to heal Glem. With the sound of breaking glass, the shield around the elf woman shattered into shards of mana as my killer drone got into the fight. His huge, clawed hands had smashed the defensive barrier, but now, the sharp, broken pieces began to swirl around the woman, making approaching her at melee range a deadly proposition.
Arrows from Glurk also were blocked by the shards, but the drone didn’t seem to care, and reached his clawed hands through the swirling maelstrom of mana shards, trusting his armor to protect him. With a shriek, the elf tried to back away as the long arms of the drone reached her. A quick snip of his claws turned the elf into a puff of mana vapor as her summoning ended early.
She must have been one of the other participants and hadn’t yet left her room. I was down to eleven competitors, and I had only lost my weakest minion. The elf woman and her room had nothing for me to pilfer, so I was still unarmed and unarmored.
Forming back up in the hallway, I stopped us for a moment and commanded Elida to use her channel mana ability to regenerate a spell slot. She had used two to help keep Glem alive, and without her intervention and my Health Bloom, he probably wouldn’t have made it. I had a feeling that I would need every minion before this thing was over.
Up at the front of our formation, Khurr waved us forward, not spotting anything dangerous around the hallway corner. As soon as I made the turn, I could see Khurr peeking into an open doorway on the left side of the hall. He entered alongside Glem, and a moment later he came back out shaking his head to indicate there were no threats. I gave the room a quick look, but it was empty of anything useful.
The hallway then doglegged to the left, and while there hadn’t been any threats in the empty room, something was happening just out of sight. A roar of rage and the sounds of someone struggling were heard. Khurr crept forward, peeking his head around the corner to see what was going on, only to have a burst of flame drive him back. I could feel the heat even where I stood, and my gnoll scout dropped to the floor writhing in pain.
Elida stepped forward, but I waved her back, casting Health Bloom instead. My mana was regenerating fairly quickly inside the mansion, while her spell slots were a limited, and valuable resource. The goblin trio moved forward to drag Khurr back, but when they reached him, an orc charged around the corner. His clothes were burning, and any exposed skin that I could see was blistered and burnt.
The orc couldn’t stop in time and crashed into the goblins, they fell into a big pile and the drone wasted no time moving forward to engage the fallen orc. Before the drone reached him, the orc grabbed Glem, snapping his neck like a twig and stealing his chopping blade. The orc then slashed down at poor Khurr, decapitating him even as the mana slayer drone went to work with his bladed hands.
I was confused for a moment, as Glem disappeared into mana vapor, but his blade remained behind. Maybe it was because a summoned being had grabbed it, or maybe it was some quirk of the strange summoning we were on. Whatever the cause, the deadly orc was now armed.
The orc may have been seriously injured, but he was also some kind of warrior class, using a skill to deflect the incoming drone attacks in a blur of steel. Focused on my drone, the orc barely managed to block Glamb’s spear. He might have deflected the spear and my drone’s attacks, but he could do nothing against Glurk who slid behind the orc and fired an arrow into the back of his head at point blank range.
The orc, and my fallen minions had already disappeared into mana vapor as another bright burst of flames lit the hallway. Whoever had toasted the orc was still fighting someone else. I was a firm believer in letting my enemies kill themselves off, so we held back, waiting for a victor to emerge so we could take them out.