Chapter 63

The team of five progressed down the cave tunnel, Natalie taking the lead. She set a slow pace, and not only because of the slippery footing, the faintly glowing blue moss clinging to floor and walls, but rather, the potential of traps.

While the first level of the dungeon wasn’t like to include lethal ones, maiming was still on the table, the healing of which would use up Liz’s valuable mana pool. And when it came to the dungeon, the operative words were “usually” and “probably”. The dungeon couldn’t be quantified, broken down into tidy, rigidly consistent rules. Trends, yes. But constants, no.

By the standards of most delvers, Natalie and her team were well prepared. Geared up, in an archetypal team composition, and each some of the brightest of a generation, they could take comfort in the fact that as far as preparations went, few matched them. While brutal, the odds of death were, all things considered, low. Not this high up in the dungeon, and in a full squad, with potions on standby.

Still, those rational disclaimers made, Natalie was anxious.

And, of course, excited. She’d always been a girl who itched for a fight. And for the first time in a while, she’d found a conflict that mattered in an immediate sense. Beyond just fighting for her life, and her allies, she was fighting for direct progression, and less relevantly, but still important, resources. Her success or failure mattered in a way it rarely did. Not spars, but real fights, with real rewards.

They trekked along, staying silent and alert. Even Liz had found an uncharacteristic seriousness. It was strange on her, though, Natalie figured, not unexpected. For all Liz’s exuberant attitude, she’d grown up as a Beaumon. She knew the risks of dungeoneering. Half her family were career delvers, and not smalltime ones.

Turning a corner, their first encounter came into sight.

Natalie held a hand up, stilling her group. As the vanguard, she’d seen the monster first. She peered down the cave, dimming the glowing device fixed to her shoulders so that it didn’t draw the monster’s attention.

[Lesser Kobold - Lv. 1]

It was a squat, rather unpleasant looking creature, humanoid, with red skin. Scales decorated its elbows and lower limbs, with thick, clawed, animalistic feet. A reptilian, sinister face peered down at something on the cave floor, the creature hunched over and scratching the ground with interest.

Natalie fed the information back to her team. The backline had paused around the corner, so they hadn’t seen it. “Level one kobold with a spear. No armor.”

“Just one?” Jordan asked.

“Just one.”

“Easy start,” Sofia said.

Natalie didn’t disagree, though their instructors might have chided them for being dismissive. Natalie didn’t intend to treat the encounter with an undue lack of respect, but a single kobold wasn’t much of a genuine threat, not for a talented, well-prepared team of five.

Still, their instructors had drilled in the importance of treating each fight as if it were life or death. And it was, technically, for all it would take something going catastrophically wrong to even be seriously injured, much less a team wipe. With Liz, and healing potions on standby, even a serious hit could be, if not brushed off, at least easily handled.

Natalie appraised the creature in closer detail. A spear. She appreciated her recent practice against Elliot. Though she doubted the kobold would have similar training to a Tenet student, familiarity in general against a weapon was useful. She’d have to play around its reach. And, Natalie knew, contrary to its diminutive stature, the monster would be viciously fast, powerful, and above all else, blood-thirsty.

Not to mention the ever-present wildcard: skills. As a level one, it had one or two at most, possibly none, and certainly nothing overwhelming. But the problem was that she couldn’t know what. She could make guesses, drawing on knowledge from various monster encyclopedias, but that could be as dangerous as going in blind. Expectations were fine, but not assumptions. Assumptions got people killed.

“Ready, then?” Natalie asked. She itched to get started. Her first dungeon encounter.

When she received no disagreements, Natalie nodded to herself, then rolled her hammer around in her grip.

“Start us off?” Natalie asked Ana.

From this distance—far enough the kobold hadn’t noticed them—landing a spell with any sort of accuracy would be difficult. But what kind of delvers would they be if they didn’t take a free shot, however minimal the benefit?

Likewise, Jordan drew her bow and nocked an arrow. Her class seemed poised to be melee focused, but she’d trained in archery, and, again, free shots were free shots.

Jordan took aim, and Ana held her crystal ball up, placing a hand on the glass and drawing on her mana. Shadowy tendrils swirled around the orb, and the kobold stiffened, sensing the vibrating energy that came with magic. Liz leveled her staff toward Natalie, and that invigorating suffusion of her buffing spell washed through her.

The kobold spun, facing them. Its eyes widened as it took in the group, then shrieked, the grating noise bouncing off the walls of the cave tunnel. It sprinted forward, scrambling across slippery moss-covered floor in its eagerness.

Even knowing what the monster’s reaction would be, the ferocity of it caught Natalie off guard. There was unadulterated hatred in the scream. Why did it want them dead so badly? As simple as being territorial? Puzzling over why fabrications of the dungeon behaved as they did was probably pointless.

Plus, she had bigger things to worry about.