Better Than One - Chapter 11 As Nimble As An Ogre.

The visitors were kobold refugees from the northern two clans. Humans had attacked under cover of a blizzard and the kobolds came running, about twenty so far. More trickled in as time passed, but there were probably others hiding in the tunnels, or out in the woods. Two clans got hit, but only one chief came back alive, Eolas, the same troll that gifted us purified coal. His angry, curse ridden account has the humans at around twenty, all well armed and moving fast. Many were injured and Estra was tending to them.

This sudden influx of kobolds meant we had more mouths to feed, and during winter to make matters worse. The refugees grabbed what they could as they fled, but it wasn’t the bulky food supplies, mostly it was the metal tools they were using at the time and their own dear hides. A lot had been abandoned in hidden caches throughout, so not everything was lost for now.

A meeting at the large table normally used for weekly chief meetings was promptly arranged. Lan brought the Slime Dungeon map I was curious about. Eolas was on the edge like a volcano due for an eruption.

“We kill these grubby humans! Now!” Eolas shouted and banged his fist on the table. His face and shoulders were sporting fresh scars that [Heal] left behind.

“Have some patience.” Lan said safely across the table from Eolas.

“They didn’t take prisoners, and will kill you all if you sit here and do nothing!” Eolas growled pointing fingers across the table at Lan.

“We can’t attack them as we are, we need allies.” Lan responded.

“We do some trade with the Ogres nearby, we should ask them for help.” Rocks suggested.

Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, but I had a feeling that the ogres wouldn’t see these humans as a threat, not yet anyways, not during winter. From what I learn from Zoey, the ogre camp was a couple of hours walk south east, therefore geographically they would be safe for a while still.

“Let’s send someone out who is familiar with the ogres once this blizzard clears.” I said. During the meeting Globba came back, happy, hungry and in need of a healer. Estra got to mending her burns, and stayed quiet through the meeting, looking more displeased every time Eolas cursed out the humans. Regardless whether we can get more allies or not, we’ll need to get strong ourselves. For that we needed Essence, lots of Essence, and there’s no better place than a dungeon.

“We are not going to sit here and do nothing. We’ll hit the dungeon while we send out for help,” I said. Lan nodded, while Eolas grumbled under his breath but didn’t respond. Globba moaned out excitedly at suggestion of the dungeon, while stuffing her mouth full of food from the table.

I poured over the Slime Dungeon map that Lan had made, looking for any ideas. My [Inspect+] told me that the slimes were mainly water, around 90% or so. I’d imagine that frost magic would work really well against them by freezing all that water. Unfortunately, Estra was a Fire Mage, and nobody had ice magic. Then I had an idea.

To get our troops some Essence I proposed the idea of routing freezing winter air into the dungeon. The plan would be to open a tunnel from the outside into the Slime Dungeon, and then dig a tunnel upwards inside the dungeon. The temperature difference would create an upward draft thereby sucking in cold air from the outside. The freezing air would seep down the dungeon levels and freeze the slimes. Either killing them, or at the very least making them weak and slow, easy for the kobolds to finish off.

It was going to be a great, except Lan quickly shut the idea down by bringing up a few key details. First, the dungeons are sentient and this one had a master core, able to see throughout the bounds of its territory. It would would quickly realize there’s cold air being funneled inwards, killing its slimes, and would just seal it up at first opportunity, or create walls and doors to seal in the cold air to the first level. Second, we would have to dig through many yards of stone, something that could take months.

In the end, I formed up a party of all eleven of our Kobold army, along with Eolas, Lan, Globba, and us. We needed a lot of Essence, and it was going to be split sixteen ways. The eleven kobolds were geared similar to Lan, short swords and small shields. This made them fast and agile, perfect for fighting in tunnels. I left Rocks in charge of the place and told Zoey to get help from other kobold clans, and from the Ogres once the blizzard cleared.

It was only going to be a short excursion. We planned to go as far as what Lan had already mapped out, while adding a few of the missing spots to the map on the first three levels.

With the aid of [Balls of Light] we proceeded through the dungeon’s first level. The place was eerily quiet with a light draft whistling around the corners. The first level was arranged like a maze, but we had a map. It was also quite empty thanks to Globba’s recent excursion, so we went straight to the next lower level. It got progressively warmer as we descended down a spiral staircase for what felt like a hundred yards down.

Out of the staircase we came out into a long hallway several yards wide. It had an oppressively low ceiling that I could touch with my extended arm, feeling the cool rough texture of granite slabs. The ceiling wasn’t domed but perfectly flat, and I was fearful that it might just collapse right on top of us, a squishy feeling I didn’t want to experience again.

An ensemble of flatulence noise was reverberating down the hard solid walls. Various sized slimes were jumping and rolling around, like it was in a middle of grape stomping season. It was a multicolored laser show, a rave party. The slimes danced around, glowing in tune to their elemental nature. A scant few were iridescent, and in a midst was a large blob that was only ‘visible’ by effect, it was so dark that it was absorbing light from around itself.

I wasn’t sure what set them loose, whether it was the sound of our movements, or the light from our summoned lights. I felt bad to have disturbed them, it seemed like they were having a good time. I set up ahead of the group and felt a warm glow of Estra’s [Fireball] like standing in next to a heat lamp. I shot off a round of [Kinetic Spikes] before grounding the shield in front, but the spikes were largely ineffective against these blobs.

With a woosh the [Fireball] flared down the hallway and crashed into the coming wave of slime. The gelatinous mass damped the sound and absorbed the explosion, like shooting into a pillow. Maybe it was the enclosed space of the hallway, but the [Fireball] explosion seemed stronger than what Estra produced before. I was afraid it would bring the ceiling down on us, but it held. A list of tiny essence gained notifications scrolled by as the [Fireball] burned off the chaff.

“Did you upgrade your [Fireball] spell?” I asked Estra, and she only grinned in reply.

While the smaller slimes were popping like zits from the heat, the few bigger ones shrugged off the flames, picked up speed and came barreling down. Globba was springy on her toes, ready to pounce once they reached us.

None of the slimes in the front of the pack were as big as the one we took down earlier that day. Four of them were about a knee high, but when one slammed into my shield head on, it felt like I was hit with a bowling ball. Globba sliced one in half, while the rest drove right through our ranks. Miraculously, nobody was hit by the rolling slimes, and once they collided with the stairwell behind us the kobolds finished them off.

Eolas was taking out every bit of frustration and anger on the slimes with his spiked iron club. He was wearing a brick colored leather jerkin armor that was a few inches too short to fully cover his light gray pot belly with a protruding belly button. The normally knee high boots were folded down around the thighs of his stubby legs.

After a few more rooms and passages, we got it down to a routine. We’d start with a [Fireball] or two, and then we’d slice and bash whatever survived the inferno. By the time we cleared the second level, I was hot, and getting hungry. But all that was worth it, as I also got a new skill, picked up few odd items and gained a bunch of Essence.

Learned: Shield Proficiency [Tier 1 skill]

[t1] Shield weight reduction of 10%

[t1] Shield magic resistance, reduces magic damage by 10%

[t1] Shield durability increase of 10%

The shield felt noticeably lighter and somehow looked sturdier. It also took on a certain luster that wasn’t there before.

Looted:

Vial of acid x3

Vial of seep oil x1

Asphalt chunk x2

Ice cube x1 (which quickly melted.)

Essence gained: +3,124 [Current: 4,752. Total: 32,561]

Tired and worn out, I suggested calling it a day, but wasn’t prepared for the response I received. Eolas called me various names synonymous to a sissy, Globba begged to go down to the next level, and Lan didn’t say anything, but it seemed the kobolds wished to continue.

That’s how we ended up on the next, third level, and the atmosphere there was hot and humid – for Estra and I anyways. Everyone else weren’t sweating buckets, but then again, they weren’t so thickly padded with armor as us. I looked over the stats help window hoping that something could be done about it, and there was. Constitution stat increased heat and cold resistance. However, the next [Evolve] option we already met the needed 130 Con requirement. The stat that that I really needed to raise to [Evolve] was Agility, currently at 67.

Agility: Body Movement Speed; Dodging / parry chance; Flexibility / mobility; Reflexes (50%); Hit chance.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead and selected the ‘+’ next to Agility until I spent all the Essence I had, raising the stat by 51 points to 118. Nimble. That’s how I’d describe how I felt after I raised my Agility. It was a shared stat, so Estra noticed it too and was happy for it. Though weighted down by many pounds of armor and the large shield, my step acquired a springy characteristic to it. I didn’t feel like a ladened elephant trying to navigate around the kobolds. I was less of a lumbering ogre, and more like a pudgy human. It was a marked improvement that I didn’t realize I needed until I had it.

The third level wasn’t anything like the previous two. From the stairwell we exited into a large chamber. The ceiling was taller, with hanging braziers down the center illuminating the area in an orange red light. The rectangular chamber stretched on for several hundred yards ahead, and was fifty yards wide. The walls on both sides were intermittently broken up by pitfalls like pockets on a billiard table, and these square shaped drops were similarly strewn about the floor in a seemingly random pattern.

Nothing was moving, the place was vacant. A menacing silence hung in the air. We didn’t get far when we heard a loud clang, as if a mechanism was activated, followed by a number of clicking sounds. A heavy rumbling sounds could be felt emanating from very structure. That’s when I noticed subtle oval grooves indented in the solid stone floor, several feet across, as if created by some odd steamroller.

It was a good thing that I increased my Agility before what happened next.