Dungeons and Dalliances

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 likely 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.

Halfway to them, a black-feathered arrow sprouted from the creature’s neck. It didn’t falter. The kobold ripped the projectile out then tossed it aside, flesh reknitting in an instant. Jordan’s beautiful aim had cost the creature HP, but killing even a level one monster wasn’t as simple as a well-placed shot.

Nor a well placed spell. A shadow tendril whipped out, conjured from Ana’s crystal ball, slashing across the creature. It grunted, the weight behind the blow slowing it much more than Jordan’s arrow had, but still only briefly.

Then, finally, it arrived, and Natalie could participate.

With Natalie leading the pack, the farthest forward, the kobold was happy to focus on her. A spear jabbed out, lightning fast, which Natalie narrowly blocked with her shield. Even with Liz’s empowering buff reinforcing her, the movement jarred her shoulder, the spear’s metal tip slamming against her shield hard enough to make her grunt and nearly lose her footing—even well-braced as she’d been.

The dungeon wasn’t intended to be tackled alone, as that first exchange demonstrated. Well trained, reinforced with a healer’s empowering buff, and braced for the hit, and still the level one kobold had nearly toppled her over with the strength of its first attack.

The kobold yanked its spear back, dragging her shield with it, having embedded into the wood. Natalie grunted, again, with exertion as she yanked back, freeing herself. Again, she struggled to keep her footing.

It was strong. More than she’d expected, for all she’d been warned. Even simple level one monsters were meant to be handled by entire teams.

As the tank, it was her job to keep the kobold’s attention, and preferably not to get cut to pieces while doing so. Since the monster was faster and stronger than her, and had supernaturally enhanced weaponry, it wasn’t the easiest task. Natalie’s focus wouldn’t be on the offensive. That was Jordan, Sofia, and Ana’s task. Natalie just needed to survive a bloodthirsty, enraged assault.

She found herself grinning, heart pounding hard enough she felt it in her ears. The kobold traded another blow with her, which glanced off her shield, and a window opened, which Natalie seized, swiping her hammer forward. The kobold sidestepped it easily. Natalie’s defensive posturing making it difficult to score meaningful hits against someone so much faster than her. But the maneuver opened an opportunity for the rest of the team.

Sofia edged in from the kobold’s flank, scoring a slash against its thigh. The kobold growled and spun on her, jabbing a spear forward, but Sofia had already danced away. Natalie knew first hand how impossible she was to hit.

Jordan and Ana snuck their own attacks in, but Natalie focused on herself; tracking everyone was impossible, and she had a role to fill. With the kobold’s attention briefly diverted, she went on the offensive—if only for a quick shield bash, then a second swipe of her hammer. It succeeded in drawing the kobold’s attention back, but not in doing much damage.

The following minute was a blur of the sort Natalie had plenty of experience with. She took several hits. That was close to inevitable as the team’s tank, and the reason healers were a standard fixture for any team.

Natalie didn’t feel the injuries, doused in adrenaline as she was. Most were glancing scrapes from the kobold’s spear, Natalie not managing to escape in time. The wounds knitted over in an instant, infused with a warm glow—Liz’s contributions.

If the kobold landed a thrust into a more important place—say, her chest—Natalie’s HP would rear up and block the blow entirely, unlike the minimal protection it offered her arms and legs. That would demolish her reserves, though, and, as a level one, she probably only had one ‘lethal save’ of HP, even as a defense oriented class. Unexpected deaths did happen down in the dungeon, even to Tenet students.

The reminder, oddly, excited her.

Natalie found opportunities, here and there, to surge forward and get her own blows in, but for the most part, she played defensively. Moment by moment, each of her team’s attacks scraping down the kobold’s impressive health reserves, the monster started to flag. That indicator shown, the three damage dealers watched with razor focus for the chance to land the lethal blow. Natalie halfway wished she could, too, but as fast as the kobold was tiring, so was she. Hard to match something so powerful, vicious, and swift without exhausting herself.

Jordan found the opportunity. Her dagger sank into the throat of the kobold, and as fast as the blade had darted in, it withdrew, spraying green blood across Natalie’s face and against the cave wall. That was gross, but in the middle of a fight, it barely registered.

For a few moments, the kobold choked, hand grasping at its throat. Unlike with Jordan’s arrow, at the start of the fight, it didn’t have the HP to shrug the blow off.

Unceremoniously, it stumbled a step, choking, then collapsed.

Sofia stepped in and stabbed it through the skull. Natalie doubted the creature was faking, and its death was imminent without the stab, but playing it safe was always a good policy.

Its brain punctured, the thrashing stilled, then, spear, clothing, body and all, it evaporated in black smoke.

When the last strands had spiraled away and dissipated, five panting girls surrounded the defeated creature. In the center of where the kobold had been laying, a shining white orb coalesced, elevated a few inches off the ground, where its chest had been.

Then, fully manifested, the monster core clinked to the floor, rolling across mossy stone.