Chapter 41

Earth
Hillside Lake Dungeon, Ontario
August 18, 2019
07:43 EDT

I pulled my sword free of the goblin and looked up to see an axe flying towards me. Dodging to the right, I reached up and grabbed the axe in mid air. Flipping it around, I threw it with all my strength while activating one of my newest abilities. The axe quickly crossed the distance and lodged itself in the hobgoblin’s chest. The ability was Unerring Throw, which allowed me to throw objects with extreme accuracy, though it came with the drawback of having a lengthy cooldown. It had come in handy a few times already, using hobgoblin’s weapons against them.

We took some time while we ate breakfast to finally roll off the Skill Gems we had accumulated the day before. Only fourteen were useful for us, so I set the other five to the side to be sold off at a later date. Still, the fourteen that were useful meant that every one of us got at least one new skill we could use, which was quite welcome as most of us had a pretty limited repertoire.

The room on the nineteenth floor was another interesting one. It was also absolutely massive. Hexagon shaped, the room had a large number of pillars that were cut off from one another. The only way to get to another pillar was to wait for one of the rotating bridges to turn so we could run across. The problem? There were groups of goblins on each of those pillars, and we had to fight our way across before waiting for another bridge to rotate so we could advance.

Going directly through the center of the room would be the fastest, but also much more dangerous. Each pillar in the middle of the room had four bridges that connected to it, which meant that we could be stuck fighting two groups of goblins while waiting for the bridge to rotate, only to have to fight another group of goblins as we ran across the bridge.

Comparatively, the pillars along the edge of the room would take the longest, but be much less dangerous. There were only three bridges that connected to them so we would only have to fight a maximum of two groups at a time; one from the pillar we were on, and one group from the adjacent pillar.

We decided to go with the path that would take us along the right side of the room for two reasons. The first was that it would allow us to focus on two directions; directly in front of us and to our left. The second was just that it would make it easier, even if it took slightly longer.

The goblins in the large room were a mix of goblins and hobgoblins, and there were a few more new varieties, those being berserkers and axe throwers, as well as something new. We had seen goblins riding on wolves on the floor that was setup to mimic the outside world, but we hadn’t seen any since then. Until now, that is.

They seemed akin to beastmasters. Some rode on wolves or other animals, including the odd bear. Those weren’t the only animals they commanded though. There were coyotes, eagles, and even a few cougars to name a few. While the animals didn’t seem to have any new abilities, they were faster, stronger and more agile than one might naturally be.

We decided to call them Beast Tamers. They were rather unique in that as well as commanding animals, they also used a variety of weaponry and had differing fighting styles. Some used bows, some used swords, and one even had two short wooden rods that he used to fight at close range. He was unlucky enough to go up against Anja, who cut through the rods with ease using her nodachi.

The most bizarre of the Beast Tamers was a female hobgoblin that commanded an eagle, while she herself used a pair of daggers. She didn’t have any stealth skills or movement abilities, and her entire strategy seemed to revolve around her eagle attacking someone’s face giving her time to get close. It didn’t end well. Her eagle collided with my shield, stunning it, and I saw her coming all the way. Aside from that, the floor was pretty normal and there were no curve balls thrown at us. It would have been an absolute nightmare if we had to deal with traps while running to a new pillar.

The five of us ran towards the fifth pillar as soon as the bridge was in place for us to do so. Though they rotated fairly slowly, the bridges never stopped moving which meant that we could get trapped on a bridge if we weren’t fast enough. Luckily I had something that helped with that. Breathing in, I projected a jet of flame towards the goblins waiting at the edge of the pillar, roasting many of them and making the others flee.

As soon as we were across, Mason turned to prevent the goblins from following us. He didn’t have to stay there long; only long enough for the bridge to turn ten to fifteen degrees so the bridge would no longer connect with the pillar. While he was doing that, the rest of us started dealing with the goblins on our pillar. We were fortunate that it was the hobgoblins that were waiting at the edge of the pillar, so we only had to deal with a few more. The rest were regular goblins which weren’t really a threat and any one of us could deal with them rather quickly.

It was fortunate because the timing of the bridges varied, and the bridge that connected our pillar with the one to our left rotated into place around fifteen seconds after we had arrived on the pillar. Hobgoblins charged forward with dozens of goblins behind them. After finishing off the last remaining hobgoblin with a quick thrust, I pulled my sword free and then used Blink to meet them.

Anja beat me there using her newest ability. Leaping forward, her entire body gave off a soft white glow as she moved faster than I’d ever seen anyone move before. Every time her nodachi flashed through the air, several hobgoblin heads would be sent flying down below. It only lasted for about three seconds, but in that time she had killed nearly a dozen hobgoblins, and injured a few others. She turned into smoke and disappeared. A moment later I felt a slap on my ass.

[You’re up, ] she sent.

Blinking forward, I activated the very same ability she had just finished using. That’s right, both of us had learned the same ability. Omnislash is a Tier C skill, which surprised all of us at first, until we realized why it wasn’t at a higher tier than that. There are a number of contributing factors, but the cooldown of an ability seems to have a lot of weight when determining what tier a skill or perk placed in. The sixty second cooldown and the rather limited duration of the ability meant that while powerful, it wasn’t higher than Tier C.

The ability itself allows us to move and attack very quickly, enabling either of us to launch devastating attacks. I was even more deadly than Anja was with the ability active, my two swords killing goblins with every strike. By the time the three seconds were over, another dozen and a half hobgoblins were dead, and the remaining goblins froze. Whether that was frozen in fear or something else, who knows.

We stared at each other for a while before one of the hobs in the back fired an arrow at me. It was deflected by Mana Shield, and that triggered the goblins to attack again. The bridge would soon no longer connect our two pillars, so they were pushing and shoving to get across in time. Some were inevitably pushed off, falling to their deaths, but the majority of them made it across, only to fall to the five of us. Mason had finished up with the goblins chasing after us so he leapt over using Whirling Leap and followed it up with a Seismic Shove. The result was that any goblin that wasn’t killed immediately by Whirling Leap was sent falling to their deaths after being knocked off the pillar.

It was the fastest we had cleared one of the pillars, so we moved over to where the bridge would take us to the next pillar. While we waited for it to rotate, it gave us the opportunity to see what lay in store. There were two Beast Tamers riding wolves, one of them equipped with a bow while the other had a pair of weapons. I couldn’t tell what they were exactly, as I could only see the handles poking over his shoulders, but they looked to be axes or swords. Aside from that, there wasn’t anything special in the group. It was made up of warriors and archers primarily, but I had no doubt that there were other types of goblins that I couldn’t see.

When the bridge was almost to us, we all hopped onto it and started running to the other side. The goblins seemed to have the same idea we did, as a bunch of them hopped on the other side of the bridge and charged towards us. I could have taken care of them, but Mason had already activated his only new ability. Similarly to Omnislash, a white aura emanated from his body before coalescing into a form in front of him as he ran. When it was complete, the phantasmal creature lowered its head and ran forward. It swung it’s horned head to and fro, knocking all of the goblins off the bridge, or, in one unlucky hobgoblin’s case, impaled it and lifted it into the air.

The ability was Bull Rush, which, as you can probably imagine, sends a bull running forward. Using it in large open rooms would probably be rather useless, but on bridges or corridors, it was a very powerful ability. The bull dissipated just after getting across the bridge, but it was enough. Mason had been following right behind the bull the whole way, so he Dashed forward and used Seismic Shove again. It didn’t knock any goblins off the pillar as it has before, but it did give us a nice open area to stand in.

Omnislash was back off cooldown, so Anja and I split up and each took a section of the pillar and activated the ability. Just like that, over two dozen goblins and hobgoblins were dead and we had a bit more room to work with. Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large amount of goblins running over from the adjacent pillar. Not wanting to fight nearly two entire pillars-worth of goblins, I warned my friends before activating Blink and appearing at the end of the bridge.

Breathing in, I unleashed a wave of extreme cold at the approaching goblins. The range wasn’t nearly as far as my fire breath, but it did the trick. The first few dozen goblins were frozen solid, and that pretty much created a wall that stopped the goblins in their tracks. They could probably destroy the frozen statues, but that would take time. By the time that happened the bridge will have already moved out of range leaving them trapped there until it rotated around again.

I turned around in time to see a cobra flying through the air. It struck one of the hobgoblin archers in the neck, and immediately bit down. The archer dropped his bow and reached up with both hands, grabbing onto the cobra. He yanked to try to pull it off and finally managed to do so after a few seconds and quickly killed the cobra. The cobra had done its job, however. As the hobgoblin went to pick up his bow, he stumbled before collapsing face-first into the stone floor, dead.

That was Cobra Shot, one of Sonja’s three new abilities. When activated, she would fire an arrow as she normally did, but that arrow would turn into a cobra as it flew. One with extremely potent venom. It too had a sixty second cooldown, but seemed quite powerful. The real test would be when she used it on a boss.

Looking around the pillar, I saw that the mounted archer was sitting in the back firing off arrows without pause. Wanting to put a stop to that, I bent down a picked up a sword that lay in the cooling hands of a dead hobgoblin. Drawing my arm back, I flung the sword towards the hobgoblin. It tumbled through the air a couple times before balancing out and flying tip-first. The archer must have seen something out of the corner of his eye, because he looked over. His eyes went wide and he barked out a command to his wolf. The wolf moved, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough.

The sword lodged itself deep inside his chest, knocking him off the back of the wolf. Feeling the absence of weight upon his back, the wolf turned to look at his master. After sniffing him and nudging him a few times with his nose, he turned back to us. Spotting me alone, he bared his teeth and snarled before rushing forward.

Deactivating the sword in my left hand, I dropped it and grabbed the spear handle from my belt. I extended it by channeling mana into it and then raised it over my shoulder. After taking a few quick steps forward I activated the last of my new abilities, Javelin Toss. The ability wasn’t anything special since it was a Tier E ability, but it was another ranged attack, bringing my total up to three. Or five if my breath weapons were included in that.

It seemed that I may have thrown the spear a little too hard, as it struck the wolf’s chest and continued its way through until it finally stopped with the tip sticking out of the other end. The wolf tumbled a few times before coming to a stop. That was when the mana that was keeping the spear extended ran out and it collapsed, the handle being stuck somewhere inside of the wolf.

Grimacing at the thought of having to go digging around inside of it, I reactivated my sword and turned to help out my friends with the rest of the goblins. Getting the spear back would wait until later. Blinking to the closest hobgoblin, I impaled it through it’s chest before Blinking again and activating Omnislash to increase my movement and attack speed. The goblins were spread out quite a bit now, so I was only able to kill seven of them before the ability expired, but it was still an improvement.

I cut down goblins for another twenty seconds or so before Anja shouted, causing me to turn. The bridge that would take us to the seventh pillar was almost in place, so we all stopped what we were doing and rushed over to it. I saw that the body of the wolf had disintegrated leaving my spear handle sitting there, covered in blood. Cleaning it off could wait until later. The Beacon appeared in my hand and then both the handle and the Beacon disappeared one after the other as I ran to the bridge.

After hopping on, Mason used Bull Rush to clear the way again while I turned to face the goblins that were chasing us from behind. It was extremely easy to deal with them since the bridge was so narrow; A quick fire breath and they weren’t a problem any longer. Spotting the most dangerous-looking target, I Blinked over and punched him in the face, knocking him on his ass. Activating both of my swords, I brought them down on him. He raised his two handed axe to try to fend off my attack, but my strength was much higher than his was. With a little bit of effort, both of my swords penetrated through the hobgoblins armor, one aimed for his heart and the other his right lung.

After a quick twist for good measure, I pulled the swords free just as something hit my back, throwing me on top of the goblin I had just killed. While my armor absorbed the majority of the hit, it still hurt quite a bit. If I hadn’t been wearing my armor it would’ve done considerable damage.

Activating Precognition, I could see that it was a tall, heavily muscled hobgoblin that had hit me. He carried a heavy mace which looked to have a head made out of a block of granite that just had a handle attached to it. I saw that he was raising it overhead again, intending to bring it down on me with even greater force. Without Precognition the attack likely would have hit, but I rolled out of the way in time for it to hit the fallen hobgoblin instead. There was a sickening crunch which was followed by the distinct smell of feces, and that only proved to make the mace-wielding hobgoblin madder.

He lifted his mace about a foot before there was a flash behind him. The mace immediately dropped back down, eliciting another, quieter crunch than the previous one. The reason for that was clear, as the hobgoblin had let go of the mace to reach up to his neck, his eyes wide in shock. It had no effect as blood continued to get past his hands, coating them red and dripping down his body. He fell to his knees before falling forward, his head rolling off and stopping a few feet away.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Anja kneeling there.

[Break time is over, ] she sent, nodding her head over to the side.

Looking over, I saw that the bridge connecting the adjacent pillar to the one we were currently on had moved into place, allowing another small army of goblins to begin their charge. Nodding, I got back on my feet and used Blink to arrive before they did.

This time as I took a deep breath, vines shot out of the floor and wrapped around my head, blocking my mouth. Evidently a druid had seen what I was capable of and was trying to prevent me from doing it again. I laughed mentally at that, and unleashed the breath anyways, switching it to my frozen breath at the last second. If the vines had been resistant to fire, they definitely weren’t good against extreme cold. They immediately froze and shattered as I continued to breathe. The goblins in the front tried to turn and run away, but they were pushed forward to their deaths. By the time I was done, there was another wall blocking the bridge and I could see the druid on the other side. She was clearly furious, and seemed to be casting something else.

Not wanting to lose a spear, I looked around for a weapon I could use. Finding one, I strode over and picked it up before turning back to the druid. With a quick few steps, I threw the discarded wooden spear, this time opting to use Unerring Throw rather than Javelin Toss. The result was the spear crossing the distance between our pillars very quickly, penetrating the druid’s chest. Since she wasn’t moving forward, the impact of the strike was enough to knock her clean off her feet, ending whatever spell she had been casting.

I looked to check the position of the bridge to the eighth pillar and then began moving, wounding or killing goblins everytime my swords hit something. It was the first time we had been able to kill all the goblins on pillar, though the goblins on the adjacent pillar were trying to change that, hacking at the frozen statues of their friends or teaming up to push them off the bridge. They were making some progress, though they weren’t fast enough to reach us before the bridge arrived.

Jumping over to it, we began running with Mason in the lead. Rather than use Bull Rush, this time he activated Whirling Leap to land on the pillar and followed it up by another Seismic Shove. While it didn’t clear the goblins off the bridge, it did send quite a few hobgoblins over the side of the pillar, reducing the amount of goblins we would need to fight.

Ben activated Aura of Flame, and then all four of us went to work clearing the goblins off the bridge before it rotated too much. Up until a few hours ago Ben hadn’t been able to cast anything while moving, though that all changed with the final Tier C ability we had acquired. He made a quick motion towards one of the goblins in front of us and a ball of fire closed the distance, setting the goblin’s clothes on fire. The goblin dropped his weapons and dropped to the floor to try to put the fire out by rolling, but all that did was send him falling down to his death.

The ability was Fireblast. It does comparable damage to Ben’s Fireball, but costs a lot more mana to make up for it being an instant cast spell. The cooldown isn’t terribly long, but the cost makes repeated use prohibitive. He tried it on the first pillar and found that he could only cast it six or seven times in quick succession before running out of mana. It didn’t take him very long to regenerate enough mana to cast it again, but his mana was better spent on better things when we weren’t in a rush.

As it was, we cleared off the goblins rather quickly and got started on pushing the goblins back so the five of us would have more room to fight. Anja and I split up again, each activating Omnislash to clear a small group of goblins. After that, it was rather easy. The timing ended up being pretty weird, and we actually managed to clear all the goblins off the pillar before the bridge would let the adjacent goblins run over.

Actually, it seemed like both the bridge that would let us advance to the final pillar and the bridge leading to the adjacent pillar were perfectly synced. Rather than deal with them and then have to wait for the bridge to rotate again, we just ran across to the last pillar and cleared all the goblins off of it.

We did have to deal with the adjacent goblins one last time, but after that it was a straight shot across a long bridge to a massive balcony where a group of hobgoblins were waiting. There were two tamers in the group, one mounted on the back of a bear while the other was mounted on a male lion. How he managed to get a lion? Who knows, but it was definitely a lion.

There were four more hobgoblins in the group including a warrior, archer, druid. The fifth one looked to be a monk or whatever he was, and I decided right then that he would be my first target. After taking a few minutes to discuss who would fight what, Ben and Mason began summoning their elementals. Ben’s would keep the druid busy, while Mason’s would do the same with the archer. It wasn’t the fastest, but it was extremely durable and would be able to hound the archer until one of us was free. That left Mason to deal with the warrior while the twins would take one of the tamers. Anja chose the bear-riding tamer since the bear was likely to be slower than the lion, while Sonja would deal with the remaining hobgoblin.

As soon as both elementals were formed, they were sent forward, beginning the fight. I grabbed a new spear, extending it as I ran before activating Javelin Toss and throwing it with all my strength. I immediately channeled mana into both of my swords and then Blinked twice in quick succession. I knew that the spear likely wouldn’t hit him, it was just to get him to move. Unfortunately he moved in the opposite direction than I’d hoped, so he was still a couple of feet away from me as my spear flew by.

I lunged forward, thrusting my left sword forward, but the monk just batted it to the side and rapped me on the knuckles. I looked up to see that he was grinning while he held his staff to the side. I mirrored the grin before activating Precognition followed by Omnislash.

It was like I was moving in slow motion. The monk’s grin was still on his face, but it was slowly changing into a look of something else. I didn’t pay much attention to it, however. My body almost started moving on its own. There weren’t any other enemies to attack nearby so my swords struck the monk over and over.

It felt like a lot more than three seconds for me, but in those three seconds there wasn’t a spot on his body that wasn’t hit. Unless I looked closely, it didn’t even look like I was injuring him with my strikes. Until time went back to normal for me, at least. Then blood started pouring from all over the place and the monk fell to his knees as he choked up blood. He had dropped his staff and clutched his chest before looking up at me, a look of shock upon his face. A moment later, he collapsed face down onto the floor, dead.

I turned and looked around the room to see who needed help the most. Anja had taken out the bear’s rider, so now she was just dancing around the bear who was too slow to catch her. Sonja had taken the opposite approach, going for the lion first, and that seemed to be going equally as well. The lion’s master lay upon the ground with an arrow sticking out of his gut as he convulsed, a clear sign that he had been a victim of Sonja’s second new ability: Stunning Shot.

I saw that the druid was trying to keep its distance from the fire elemental, but it was having a rough go of it. He was able to summon vines that looked highly resistant to the inferno that made up the elemental, but they weren’t able to do anything since the elemental didn’t have a physical form. I did see what looked like clouds a few meters over the elemental, but the rain they were producing wasn’t nearly enough to extinguish the flames. Deciding to leave the elemental to it, I looked around the room until I saw the earth elemental.

It was not doing well. There were arrows sticking out all over the place and the stone that made up its body was chipped as well. One leg was definitely longer than the other, causing the elemental to have an uneven stride, slowing it down quite a bit. I saw that Mason had the warrior on the ropes after a quick glance, so I decided to deal with the archer.

Blinking over, I appeared behind the archer as he was backing up towards me. He had no idea I was there, which made it extremely easy to thrust both of my swords through his back. I twisted them before pulling them free, looking back up to see the earth elemental had closed the distance, it’s two boulder-sized fists raised high overhead. I quickly backed up just as it brought those two fists down, utterly crushing the hobgoblin below while shaking the ground. Apparently Mason hadn’t given it very clear instructions as it repeatedly lifted it’s fists overhead and brought them down on the hobgoblin’s corpse. Watching it was almost like watching someone use a mortar and pestle to crush or grind something.

The action continued to the point that the earth elemental literally started breaking apart from the sheer force. Given time, an earth elemental could do a ridiculous amount of damage, and this one was only rank one. It made me shudder when I thought about what an earth elemental made out of metal could do.

[Uhh, Mace? I think your elemental has done its job.]

[Uh-huh, I think you’re right, ] he replied.

A moment later the earth elemental ceased smashing the archer any further and strode over to Mason, who had finished off the warrior a while ago if the large pool of blood around it was any indication. The rest of the combat in the room had halted, as everyone had watched with morbid fascination as the archer was quite literally ground into paste.

The only two combatants left were Sonja and the tamer that had been riding on the lion, but she raised her bow and fired it without looking before walking over to the rest of us. The arrow turned into a cobra on the way, which sunk its teeth into the chest of the hobgoblin, making it realize that it was still in a fight. Looking down at the source of the pain, he seemed horrified to see a snake had latched onto his nipple.

Screaming, he ran around for a few seconds before grabbing onto the snake and pulling it free. Dropping it onto the floor he began stomping on it until he stumbled and fell to his knees. He looked down at the remains of the snake, and then up to Sonja as she walked away, and then collapsed to the floor.

The bodies started disintegrating a moment later and we went around picking up anything left behind. We didn’t get lucky in terms of loot, but we did get some extra Mana Gems from the lion and bear, which was pretty cool. We now had hundreds of things which would make for a decent payday whenever we decided to sell them.

As we were walking to the stairs leading to the twentieth floor, I saw something glint out of the corner of my eye. Looking over, I saw the handle of the spear I had thrown was sitting up against the wall nearby. I grabbed it after Blinking over, and then Blinked back to rejoin my friends.

Walking down the long stairs, we activated the waygate and then stopped to look at the double doors. Usually they were pretty bare and normal-sized, but these ones had a portrait carved into them and were many times bigger.

The image was of two hobgoblins that looked like they were twins. Everything from their weapons to their armor was identical. At first I thought that they were axe throwers or berserkers, but that was when I noticed the two similarly identical wolves that were off to the side, a hand from each of the hobgoblins resting on their respective wolf. Without opening the door, it seemed like we would be facing the boss for the twentieth floor immediately, rather than having to make our way through a maze or fight our way through the floor.

Not wanting to waste any time, I walked up to the doors and pushed them open. They slid open with ease, revealing a brightly lit up room. It was shaped like a triangle and was similar to the previous floor in that we would be fighting on pillars. There were three of them; one directly in front of us down a set of stairs, and then two more pillars that were accessed by narrow bridges.

There were two more bridges that led to a set of stairs on the direct opposite side of the room where both hobgoblins and their wolves had been sitting. Now, though, they made their way down those stairs and split up, each hobgoblin and their wolf going to one of the two pillars. As they walked, a thin tablet-looking object started rising out of the floor on the pillar closest to us. It looked to have some text on it, but it was too small for any of us to read.

The five of us walked down the stairs and positioned ourselves so we could see the text. After taking a minute to read what was on it, we all looked at each other with different expressions on our faces.

The tablet outlined a set of rules for the fight, the chief among them being that we would have to select two party members to fight. The two party members selected would split up, each fighting one of the bosses. It was a non-lethal duel, ending when either the hobgoblins surrendered or the party members did. There was another important rule as well; the two people we choose will get a piece of soulbound equipment and a Skill Gem suitable for them if they win. The rest of us will get nothing.