ALL NOVEL Eighth Floor Conquered – Chapter 254
Ace and his team; Sammy, Jack, Susan, Og, and Ruby managed to tank the strange effects of the square room with five sides decently well. While each of them tended towards having one or two stats they’re focused on, they still spread the points around. Plus, they had a few paths which gave points per level to all stats.
Of course, while they were capable of handling the strangeness, that didn’t mean they were able to roll with it right away and this presented a chance. As they try to recover, the group of 20 kobold mages go on the offensive. After corralling the 14 wooden goats near them into charging, all 20 of them start to cast spells.
While there does seem to be a general avoidance of the fire element, all the classic elements are now shooting towards the team. Though at this point, a display like this doesn’t really phase the Ace and company. It was a lot more dangerous in the previous room, but more because it could push them around.
Not that spells weren’t dangerous. Rather, with the skills and experience the team has, elemental bullet spells just seem weak. In particular, Sammy is the best at dealing with these fireworks displays of low-level spells. She stands in front of the group and raises her shield, which starts to glow.
Then, as the spells begin to fall upon the group, they all seem to funnel towards Sammy’s shield and get snuffed out as they touch it. Of course the skill won’t last forever and since it is a more general “pull attacks toward the shield” style of thing it isn’t perfect. But against elemental bullet spells? The skill is way more than enough.
Not that the classic spell of summoning a small ball of stuff and launching it at your enemies is a bad spell. Almost every mage, even the non-combat types will have it as an option, and it can be improved. Whether that means more of the stuff, shaping the stuff, or making the stuff fly faster, you can do a lot with it.
It is unfortunate for the dungeon kobolds that they aren’t actually able to cast the spells on their own and depend on the wands to facilitate casting the spell. Maybe later on this issue will be fixed, but for now they’re stuck using the base spell. So instead of worrying about them, Ace’s attention is more on the small herd of wooden goats now barreling down on the group.
Sure, the kobolds are dangerous, but it was the goats that really shined once you actually looked into it. In the background, they had slowly been getting stronger and harder to deal with. In fact, on this floor, Ace was certain the goats were actually stronger than anyone in town.
Besides the strength though and despite their own strength increasing, the goats innate toughness was still well on its way to our classing them. Originally, most goats could be taken out with a single hit and a few requiring a couple more after. The goats on the eighth floor almost never fell to a single hit, nearly always requiring a couple extra shots.
If both sides had been progressing linearly that shouldn’t be the case. Though as Ace blocks a goat with a wooden shield, he has to admit the goats aren’t the only ones getting tougher. Still, it was clear that the townspeople weren’t on the winning side of the toughness race.
The only good thing is that while a higher Constitution does allow them to survive more of a beating, it doesn’t remove their weaknesses. Though variants like the wooden goats definitely made hitting those spots harder.
Then, as the fight seems to have stabilized, Og gets a little too close to one of the beds and the assassin vine under it grabs him. When Ace notices this, he calls Susan back from the front line to take care of it. This isn’t a major problem, but with two of the damage dealers now distracted, especially Og who had been focusing on keeping the mages in check, things get a little hectic.
Though of all the back line fighters, Og was the safest one to get grabbed. While Sammy has him beat in Constitution, he isn’t actually all that far behind. Og has actually focused mostly on his physical stats at a pretty even split. Not that he would even match up with someone trying to be a tank even if they had the same Constitution scores.
Sure, as a human, Og is receiving improvements to how tough he is. That isn’t the main drive of what his constitution score means to him, though. Instead of a focus on toughness, he views it as a way to increase his Qi pool. A vitally important resource when it comes to his focus on using anything as a throwing weapon.
Though not for any kind of damage, at least not yet. While Qi can stick to thrown objects, it isn’t like Mana and quickly fades. The reason Og finds it so useful, despite using throwing weapons, is the fact that it supports what he is throwing and provides a slight amount of correction to the objects rotation after release. This allows him to do stuff like you would see in superhero comics. In fact, if he gets his Strength high enough he could replicate stuff like throwing a house without it just coming apart as he tries to lift it.
Not that he can do much more in this specific fight. While not having him to thin the mages and keep them pinned down made it harder. By the time Og was free from the assassin vine, the fight was wrapping up.
With the fight over, the group takes a quick look around the room, though they do avoid going near any of the beds. It is a bit disappointing in the end. Ace had half expected some of the furniture to be normal with their looks just being warped by the room’s oddness, but nope. Every piece of furniture is basically unusable.
Seeing how they react, Doyle gets a bit of a laugh out of it. While his original purpose wasn’t to mess with them like this. The fact that none of the furniture was usable ended up having layers to it. Not only did it enhance the room’s strangeness, it teased them with complete furniture that they couldn’t use.
After that discovery, Ace and company push on to the next room. The mirror maze! Except it is so much more than just a mirror maze as the group quickly finds out. After all, what’s the first thing you try if fighting your way through a mirror maze? You try to break the mirrors, of course. After all, even if doing so doesn’t let you break the maze, at least you’re removing some of the confusion the mirrors cause.
So Jack takes his mace to the nearest mirror and not only does it fail to shatter, but there is a sound of metal hitting metal and he suffers twice the recoil. Very strange, especially since the mirror doesn’t seem to even have a scuff mark on it. Though after Susan tries to mark it with a piece of chalk, they assume they know what is up.
After all, the chalk seemed to rub off onto the mirror, it just didn’t stick for even a moment and fell to the ground. Except then Ruby tosses a spark at it. Should be a simple enough thing. The spark hits the mirror and goes poof. Except it doesn’t. Instead, the spark seems to bounce off the mirror.
Good thing they can still mark the ground or else it could have taken them hours to figure out they were going in circles. Instead, it just took them getting rerouted to the entrance three times to realize the marks they had been leaving on the ground now sometimes seemed to go through a mirror. Certainly strange, but upon seeing that it became pretty obvious that the maze could rearrange itself.
Not by too much, there were set patterns to it. So, once that was figured out as well as the grid it seemed to work on so they knew when to mark the ground, the actual maze part got easier, if tedious. More insidious were the small side passages.
One moment there would be a small alcove dead end and the next it would open up onto another corridor that had monsters in it. So, while the maze never reorganized itself while being watched, it did care if you were right next to a wall that was opening up. The only saving grace is that what the group could see was greatly extended by the nature of a mirror maze.
Then Ace got grabbed by a vine reaching through one of the mirrors. It tried to pull him through, but Susan was quick enough to grab him. The others soon followed and Sammy took the time to line up a shot and, with one mighty overhead swing, sliced off the vines with her sword. After that, the group moves far enough away that not even an elder assassin vine could grab them and they take a moment to recover.
Ace rubs his neck, “That was close. Though more worrying is if there are more of those ambushes.”
Ruby nods, “You managed to hold on long enough for someone else to grab you. If I got grabbed, I might be gone before others even notice.”
Ace, “Besides that vine all we’ve seen are sprouts and their big brothers. While dangerous in some ways, they’re not as physically threatening as that vine monster was. Worse, that assassin vine is still alive and the room likes to shift the maze around. For all we know, that assassin vine could be right next to us at this very moment.”
Susan pulls some rope out of her backpack. “We should pair up and tie ourselves together. Not everyone on one big rope, though. While less threatening, the myconids are still dangerous. Instead, just one to one, pairing those with lower Strength to those with strength to spare. It wasn’t strong enough to grab Ace away, so we just need to give the rest of the group a chance to respond.”
Ruby laughs, “I feel a little singled out here. The rest of you all have decent strength while I’m a pure caster.”
Susan smirks as she ties Ruby to herself. “You still probably have twice the strength of any other ring mage. With our positions and achievements, we all have managed to grab some decent foundation building paths. Still, I understand your point.”
Ace sighs, “Well, now that we’re all paired up, we should probably continue.”
And they did. Though they didn’t encounter the assassin vine even a single time after that. This was mostly because Doyle hadn’t wanted to make the abduction of a party member an instant kill move. So while the assassin vine could pull someone through the impassible mirror, there was a close-by path that would have taken the rest of the party to the monster.
Doyle could have placed the assassin vine completely out of reach in its own little pocket and have allowed it to reach through any of the mirrors. In the end, though, he wanted to play fair. Though that more extreme idea was a thought for the future as it certainly would fix the weakness of the vine being an ambush predator.
Doyle then realized he got caught in his musings and turned his attention back to the team who had made it into the next room. A room that to Ace and friends looked like a flat field of grass with some goats, but to Doyle looked like a minefield of tripping hazards. It honestly wasn’t the hardest room.
In fact, compared to a few of the earlier rooms it was downright easy. Even with the unseen tripping hazards scattered about it was more frustrating than difficult. Something Susan more than agreed with.
It isn’t like Susan had never tripped or fallen in her life. However, as a professional, she was proud to have basically never done so while on a job. This room, though? Even as they fought the hundred or so goats in the room, no matter how much she paid attention to her feet, she kept tripping.
For the most part, she would catch herself before eating a face full of grass. Still, when in the middle of a bloody fight, the rogue type tripping over their feet isn’t exactly ideal. Most of the others in the party were able to stand still and fight.
Susan? Not so much. Though even with the rooms imposed clumsiness, the monsters are soon cleared out and the party make their way to the next room. They do so slowly and with more than their fair share of falls, but they do make it.
And then they’re on the first floor again. Well, it looks like it anyway after the first few sub-rooms. The party fights their way through what with each passing enemy and room reveals itself to be an exact replica of the first floor. The only difference is the enemies are stronger. Suffice it to say, they are more than ready for it and soon find themselves in front of the portal to the next floor.
