RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 159

Merlin and others began to give numbers of what they scavenged from the dead bodies of the orcs and the troll before they went ahead. They found a few armor pieces which they distributed among themselves according to whom it would fit best while the gold and resources just distributed equally.

The only piece of gold grade equipment they got from this floor was the axe that Dhrome held. Its head itself was as about two feet long and it was given to Tetsujin who was the only one who had experience with heavy weapons. He found it extremely hard to carry around due to its large head and found it imbalanced for proper use.

[Dhrome’s Axe] (Two-handed Axe)

Level 15;

Attack Power +30;

Requirement: Strength 35; Endurance: 15;

Strength +10;

Special Effect: 10% higher damage caused on a critical hit..

Active Skill: Guillotine: Causes a damage of upto 300 HP in a fierce attack at one’s neck. Would also cause bleed effect. Can only be used when the opponent has less than 10% of its health. Cooldown: 10 min.

Durability :40/40;

“If not for its active skill, it is completely useless,” said Tetsujin as he held it in his hands and tried to swing it a couple of times. “It is very hard to attack at shoulder level using it. Don’t have the proper strength attribute for it. Give it to the troll or I can try putting my extra attribute points into strength once I hit level 15.”

With that Merlin gave the axe to his troll servant and tried to make it lead behind the dwarves in entering the third floor. It always paid to have a strong vanguard and they didn’t have the slightest idea of the third floor. So, he tried to make it go through the staircase which was actually a bit short for it.

“The troll can’t enter the premises below,” said the dwarf as it led them down the staircase. Merlin decided to actually check the floor before considering the dwarf’s advice.

They quickly went down the stairs and found themselves in a narrow passage which only had a few dead dwarfs and nothing else. It was a bit unlike the other floors. It was quite wide enough to allow more than 6 of them to stand beside one another, but was low in height, less than 6 feet tall with dim light shining from the gems spaced much distant compared to the ones in the floors above.

“Definitely, the ore access,” said Merlin. “And made for dwarves.”

He realized that the reason that all the orcs and trolls were in the first two floors was because they couldn’t actually stay comfortably here. The troll would actually be stuck at the bottom of the stairs and unable to move.

Merlin had to go back to the floor above and take all its equipment before he came back to the third floor. Luckily, the three shamans were able to move through the third floor, else he would have felt really bad on losing all his servants on the third floor. He had already lost his best servant and even if it managed to bend and move in the third floor it wouldn’t be much effective as it had fight in close combat.

They moved slowly through the third floor which was much darker. They had to be much more careful in this floor as the roof was low and they had to fight dwarves in this floor. There were a bunch of smaller passages which lead to temporary quarters of the possessed dwarves. Not ordinary dwarves but ones being controlled by the lord ‘Nakshakh’ who was the final boss. These dwarves could be distinguished from the others by the blackened eyes. The good thing was that these passages are quite sparse compared to the other two floors. In the whole third floor there would only be ten such passages.

Dwarves were short like goblins mostly reaching four feet high. With height as a disadvantage, the game designers compensated with high defence. They also had high strength to compensate for their lack of reach. Moreover, dwarves were treated as expert forgers by the lore of the game. So, they had good armor and the loot would even involve forging designs.

These wouldn’t usually pose much problems for players at this stage of the game as dwarf’s low reach is still an advantage to others. Mostly, dwarfs and other races don’t have conflicts at this stage of the game as the players need to have a level greater than 30 to move across racial regions. The dungeons are the first-time players experience fighting other light races.

The environment of the dungeon is also very suitable for the dwarves to fight. It was a dimly lit place where things were mostly dark and the dwarves who were short would attack the players below the belt which was always a bit hard to defend against. Though the goblins were the same height, their attacks didn’t have the same strength as that of dwarves which could be comparable to the strength of normal human berserker at the same level. The goblins also had a better eyesight with longer range than humans.

The players who had yet to face the strong offence and tough defence would find it quite hard to get through this stage. This would be very difficult, and Balthazar doesn’t realize this due to the fact that he joined the game quite late and at that time fighting dwarves was a common thing. The first contact with dwarves raised a ruckus and players would need change their styles slightly.

As they moved through the main passage, they soon came to see the first group of possessed dwarves. It was actually the two dwarves that they brought along which were able to notice them. Shadow also didn’t get a chance to attack. As he remembered, the dwarfs had a better vision in the dark and even before scouting assassins were able to attack, the dwarves noticed the other players and attacked with their axes. Shadow also retreated back to the group as he knew that standing in their path would just get him trampled.

“Damn! They deal a lot more damage compared to gnomes,” said Bitter Beast who took the first attack on his shield and was pushed back by the attack. After the two dwarves by he side shouted about the enemies, he had already bent low to take their attacks but still found them to be quite stronger than the orcs attacks and even had a stronger blow back effect.

Sultan and Tang who were right behind him also noticed the same. Tetsujin who noticed that he couldn’t slash the great sword that he got in the dungeon vertically due to its height. But when swung it horizontally at a waist level, he couldn’t get enough force as he didn’t put his shoulders into it. He who had the highest strength among them was also pushed back.

Shadow was the only one who was successful in his attacks. As an assassin, he never had the habit of countering a blade directly. He also knew that the dwarves would be quite adept with the axes and be able to block an attack quite easily with the head of their axes. So, he threw a firework amidst them to give his team a small reprieve before told them the essentials.

“They are very strong. You won’t be able to fight them head on. Bend your knees. Lower your centre of gravity if you are going to tussle with them,” said Shadow. It was basic technique in his past life for players to lower their centre of gravity when fighting dwarves so that they won’t stumble backwards.

This method also gave them a perspective of the fight from a lower viewpoint than the other taller races making them able to guess the fight style of dwarves and pattern of the attacks better. It was the way to get used to the style of fighting with dwarves and they could later use this to fight in a more comfortable way. It was obviously not easy to bend your knees and lower your back while fighting.

Though Shadow had suggested it to others, he was not going to follow the same tip he gave the others. He had already had enough experience with dwarves to know their weak points. They were strong but didn’t were slower than the human which was their advantage. Shadow always considered it stupid to block their attacks when it was far easier to just attack faster.

The dwarf being shorter always present their heads as an easy target and it was hard to use swords in the third floor due to their length but using shorter knives or daggers made it easier. He could easily lean forward to make a vertical stab into their neck while evading the dwarf attack as he already had a good idea of their attack patterns.

Him being able to fight the dwarves without much issue surprised the others when they heeded his advice to fight. Even though they realized the advantage of doing as Shadow suggested, they couldn’t easily adapt to the change in their posture during the fight. They could hardly fight better, but Shadow was already able to fight more than one dwarf at a time and was amidst them fighting the same way he fought against any other monsters.

“Dude, get yourself back here, we are hardly able to use physical attacks and your antics are making it hard for the mages too,” said Merlin who didn’t let his three shaman servants attack as he knew it he wouldn’t be able to control them well enough to avoid hitting Shadow among the dwarves in that small space.

“Oh,” said Shadow as he looked behind and realized that he expected far too much out of his teammates. They were struggling in fighting the dwarves and the reason soon dawned upon him. They had no experience with this and wanted to defend while depending entirely on the mages. But dwarves had a decent amount of resistance to magical attacks too from the armor that the wore. He knew that and felt that Merlin’s suggestion is not really sensible.

He retreated back beside Bitter Beast and started to help them tank instead. He wasn’t that into killing them either as killing these possessed dwarves didn’t provide him any life essences of the dark faction which he currently needed the most.

It was the best that he could do in this situation as his teammates who can physically fight couldn’t move ahead instead. Apart from him, only Mob was able to fight decently. He had gained a skill that allow him to see from viewpoints of his summons and that enabled him to use his summons better.

They soon managed to kill the dwarves and move forward, but it wasn’t enough for Balthazar. He found it extremely slow and inefficient to completely depend on mages. Such an approach would always require more consumables and potions and would not be the best one to follow. He was glad that they were at least improving on his suggestions as they moved through the third floor.

After they killed 7 groups of dwarves, the others managed to be able to make attacks that Shadow would consider decent. They mostly imitated his own style. Though it wasn’t the best option with swords, it was still better than their previous situation.

During this time, they also managed to get quite a decent loot from the dwarves. As the dwarves had smaller bodies it was hard to attack them at joints or weak points as they were smaller targets. Due to this, they didn’t get much equipment from the dead dwarves. But even if a piece of armor was scavenged from their body, it was at the very least a a bronze grade equipment.

By the time, they reached the end of the third floor, they gathered 15 bronze equipment, 5 silver grade armaments and 50 copper ores. Almost every other dwarf they killed had a piece of ore in their pockets.

Apart from that, Shadow also went much ahead of them once he was sure that they can handle any ambush he failed to notice with his usual excuse of scouting. He wanted to pick their pockets and was successful quite a few times and had to come back running to join the rest of the team against the dwarves.

His work also gave satisfactory results. Apart from a bunch of copper ores, he also got a couple of forging designs from the dwarves. One of them was a level 15 silver dagger and the other was a level 15 bronze vambrace. He kept them both secret and immediately learned the dagger while deciding to give the vambrace to Hammer.

The third floor ended in a large cave like room which had a high ceiling and in shape of a circle of 30 metre radius. It was a pleasant change from the passage, and it was filled with 60 or so dwarves. Most of them were just looking and laughing at a dwarf being whipped at the centre of the cave on a platform by another dwarf.

The dwarf whipping Bungar was clearly the final boss of the dungeon, the dwarf Hadbufar that had controlled by demon lord Nakshak’s spell. He was much different than the other dwarfs almost a 5 feet tall, he didn’t look like an ordinary dwarf but was like a human. He also had black eyes and black smoke that spewed out of his mouth whenever he talked.

[Hadbufar – Nakshak’s puppet] (Boss Monster)

Level 15;

HP:15000/15000;

As the team entered the large cave, the possessed dwarves around turned around simultaneously looking at them in angry way. It was like all of them were of the same mind. Hadbufar also turned around in anger from being disturbed by them. “A bunch of morons come to his rescue,” said Hadbufar in a deep gravelly voice. “Show them how treat uninvited guests.”