Chapter 5

Wow, two chests. This could be our largest find, yet. Almo grinned and said, “Since you were the one to cut to the quick of the matter, you should have the honor of opening the chests.”

I laughed and went to the nearer chest. I flipped the catch and the chest opened. So much gold poured out of the chest that I was astonished. I did the same to the second chest, and it popped open. Again, gold coins poured out, but there were several other items of loot as well. The first thing Almo and I did was to pick up 9,914 gold coins.

Once that was done, we looked through what else was available. There were two rings, four charms, and two amulets. There was a mace, two staffs, and several items of metal armor. The mace was somewhat disappointing because it only offered a piddling amount of protection. We could sell that, but we wouldn’t get much. The two staffs were both charged with magic, but neither one of us knew how to use them, so they went into the belt pouch for later sale.

The armor was a mixed lot. There was chest armor that was superior to my jerkin, so I made the swap. I was tired of being poked by those damned arrow heads. There was one set of bracers for wrist and forearm protection. I took them because Almo already had a set. They added 2.1% to my damage quotient. The last item was a helmet that neither one of us wanted, so that was set aside for future sale.

Neither one of the rings were useful to us, and the same was true for three of the charms. One charm improved vision, so Almo took that. The two amulets were useful, but not big deals. One offered 12% protection against fireballs, and Almo took that. The other offered 18% improvement in stamina. I took that. It turned out that, except for the money, these chests were just so-so. Oh, well...

We went outside where the air was better. I felt like I had been deprived of coffee for way too long, and I wanted to make up for that. I had a large cup of coffee and Almo had watered wine. Okay, back to work. We cleaned up our trash and went back inside the building.

The whole floor had 20-foot ceilings, and there was no second floor as such. The roof could be used as a fighting platform, but it had nothing to offer us. On the other hand, there was the storage area below, and we wanted to take a look at that. Surely, most of the valuable stuff had been taken, but there was always the possibility of something being forgotten. There was an open shaft that disappeared into darkness, even with our improved vision.

The shaft appeared to be the local equivalent of a freight elevator shaft, but it was manually operated. We didn’t find that to be very attractive. However, there was a set of stairs that surrounded the shaft, so that was what we decided to try. From the look of the stairs, there must be at least three levels for storage below us.

The first level down was laughingly labeled by me as “B-1.” We entered what amounted to a maze of small rooms that had once been used as offices and living quarters. There was even a large latrine that still had functioning running water. There was a shower area attached with hot water, no less. Dammit, I was coming back here as soon as we cleared the building of enemies.

As it was, I took off my loincloth and gave it a good washing while Almo looked through the neighboring rooms. I hung up the cloth over a pipe to dry as soon as I was satisfied that it was as clean as I was going to get it. Thank God, I had not started my period yet. Anyway, I left the loincloth to dry while I joined in the hunt for monsters and demons.

We systematically searched all of the rooms and found them to be clear of demons and monsters. Our guess was that the giant had eaten all of them that he could catch, and the rest had run far enough to be out of reach. I was surprised at how clean the kitchen was when we finally found that. It looked to be usable as is, but, of course, I was going on a cleaning spree before I ever used it.

We went down to B-2, and found some barrels and crates. As we expected, all of them were empty. Still no sign of monsters and demons. Were they really all gone?

Level B-3 was a surprise. It looked like this level had been in the process of being cleaned out when the owners had been interrupted. Part of the area was cleared, but over half of the area was still neatly filled with barrels and crates. There were a few broken crates lying on the floor as if they had been dropped, and we did find one smashed barrel. None of the contents of these crates and barrel could be seen.

Uh-oh, here was where we found the monsters and demons that we had been expecting. Except for some supporting pillars, the floor was completely unobstructed so that it was one huge room. However, there were places where barrels or crates were stacked from the floor to the ceiling, so that vision was obstructed as if there were walls dividing the space into rooms. Hell, it was going to take us days to search through all of these storage containers.

At one point, we were met by three of the lion dogs. They were the one thing that we were not expecting, and they caught us by surprise as they charged at us. Of course, we were holding our weapons ready for battle, so this was not a lost cause.

The lion dogs attacked with one charging at me and two charging at Almo. One of those got to him first, and he swung his poison sword at it. He made contact and the lion dog barely had time to begin a yelp of pain before it was obliterated by an electric shock. At the same time, two bolts leaped out from the sword to kill the other two lion dogs. That was the kind of action we had come to expect from Almo’s sword, but it was his quick reaction that saved us from considerable pain or even death. Naturally, I thanked him for his quick action.

Okay, no more casual walking around. There were mortal enemies at this level, and it was up to us to eliminate them before they did any more damage. We decided to stick together because we had no idea what to expect. Our next encounter was with a gang of the small demons and a shaman.

This time, we saw them first, and we wadded in with swords swinging. The small demons were armed with their usual shortswords which forced them to get in close before they could do any damage. The shaman was pouring fireballs at us as fast as he could sling them, and I was spending as much time blocking the fireballs as I was in trying to kill demons.

It seemed like every demon in creation was coming after me, and, between the demons and the fireballs, I didn’t have time to deal with the shaman. Fortunately, Almo immediately recognized my problem and took off after the shaman. My lightning bolts were wiping out demons as fast as I could swing at one, but it seemed like the shaman could call up demons faster than I could wipe them out.

Suddenly, on top of everything else, I was hit by a purple ball of energy, and my sword stopped sending out bolts of lightning. Oh, my God, what was that? I spied off to one side a sphinx-like creature that was pumping out the purple energy balls at Almo and me. Almo had recognized and reacted to the danger before me and was jumping around making himself an impossible target. Dammit, I had better start doing the same.

The dampening effect of the purple energy ball only lasted a few seconds, so my lightning bolts returned very quickly as long as I was not being pelted in purple. My jumping around was surely all that saved me from the attacks of so many demons because that let my sword have an opportunity to clear an area around me.

Almo finally reached the shaman and hit him a solid blow with the fire sword. The shaman exploded in a ball of fire, and Almo was lucky to be missed by it. Meanwhile, the sphinx continued to throw those purple energy balls at us while the remainder of the demons tried to cut, slash, or stab us with their swords. It did take longer than it would have without the sphinx to eliminate the demons, but the sphinx was finally all that was left.

We had seen some of our lightning bolts strike the sphinx, but it was not harmed. I suppose the purple energy absorber, whatever it was, was absorbing the electricity in our bolts and protecting the sphinx. However, Almo managed to get close enough to chop a deep cut into the sphinx’s body with his poison sword. Cuts from his fire sword had not harmed the sphinx beyond what would come from minor scratches.

Dammit, I wanted a piece of whatever it was that was protecting the sphinx. I could live without the purple balls it was throwing at us, but that protection looked like something vital to have. I also began to think that I could use a second sword the way Almo was using his two swords. I also was beginning to appreciate what poison could do for me as a weapon.

It didn’t take long for the sphinx to die once it had the cut from Almo’s sword. That was quite a relief. The floor, especially around the sphinx’s corpse, was covered with gold coins. The total we picked up was 19,453, and that didn’t count what we expected to get when we sold the weapons and such that we could not use.

We managed to find 23 items scattered about in the way of weapons and armor that we could not use or did not want. Almo estimated that we could sell all of them and take in over 11,000 additional gold coins. That would give us over 30,000 gold coins just from this one battle. That made it a very profitable, if painful, few minutes.

For some reason I did not grasp, our battle with the sphinx did not produce a treasure chest, but just a pile of goodies strewn around its corpse. Was the difference significant? Probably significant to an expert in magic, but it made no difference to us.

The one item we found that I thought was the most important of all was the amulet that the sphinx was wearing. My scanning charm told me that this was the source of the purple magic. Somehow it was keyed into the characteristics of the sphinx, and totally useless to Almo or me. Dammit, that was one hell of a disappointment, but I could live with it. At least, I hoped so. Oh well, it should bring in a lot of money when it was sold.

After that major battle, Almo and I were relieved that we did not find any more monsters or demons residing in level B-3. A delightful characteristic of dead demons and monsters was that their bodies simply vanished after about 10 minutes, so there was nothing left for us to clean up. We expected the giant’s body to be gone when we returned to the main floor. We were amazed to find that all of those aurochs’ bones were also gone. Hooray!