My second life as a dungeon

While Liz was going through her evolution trials in preparation for making the eighth floor a certain party was returning from a short quest... 

‘...I still can’t believe you got kicked out of your last party, Nethy, you are such a good fighter. They must have been idiots.’ Taren said while laughing. We were sitting around a table in the guild hall celebrating our successful quest to clear out an abandoned ruin. It had been found by a bunch of archaeologists, unfortunately they also found a pack of gnolls that had made the ruins their home. The archaeologists couldn’t deal with them all so they sent out a job request for any adventurers to come and clear it out. 

It was close by and even though we were getting paid plenty from the guild we could always use the extra money for better equipment. It took us just two days to get there but it was so overrun by gnolls that it took a whole week to clear it back, half of which was spent whittling them down by killing the patrols they sent out until so few remained that we could assault the nest without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.  

There had been so many that all of us gained at least two levels by the time we finished. The archaeologists were so happy with our job that they paid us an extra fifty gold pieces, we decided to use the extra reward to treat ourselves to a small feast. I was feeling extra happy today, even though I wasn’t saying much, as I had finally managed to gain [Lesser Mana Sense] on the quest. 

It may just be lesser at the moment, and I was getting used to it, but it meant that getting ambushed like we did the last time we went into the dungeon would be a lot less likely. Speaking of the dungeon, when we got back Nethy noticed that the arch now had a seventh, light blue, section so we had another floor to explore. But we were leaving that for a couple of days, today we were celebrating a job well done and most of tomorrow would be spent resting and recovering. 

While everyone else was chatting and laughing I was reminiscing about the past. I grew up in a poor house that couldn’t afford to send me to school, but I had still always wanted to learn magic and go on adventures. My parents were mostly supportive of my ambition so as long as I helped around the farm I could spend my spare time down at the local library teaching myself magic. 

This meant that it took me longer than usual to get my fifth level and unlock my job, it was around my twentieth birthday when the average age people got their jobs was between sixteen to eighteen. Being two years behind everyone else didn’t matter to me because I didn’t care about going fast, I just wanted to experience the world outside the village. 

Unfortunately the type of magic I got, [Minor Chaos Magic], combined with me not being formally trained to be a mage meant that I couldn’t control the element of any of the spells I cast. Every time I told a party this they dismissed me, I tried for over a year but no matter how I tried to frame it nothing changed and I started to think that I would never get a chance to leave home. 

That all changed when I met Taren and Hele, they were new adventurers from out of town looking for some party members. By this point I was desperate and asking everyone that didn’t already know about me so when Taren agreed to let me join his party I thought I had misheard him or he had misspoken. When I asked him if that was the case he just told me that he saw great potential in me. 

He carried on by saying that my spells might not be perfect all the time but as long as they got them out of the fight alive then he didn’t care about it. I almost started crying right there and immediately agreed to join his party, I didn’t even ask why the two of them were travelling by themselves. That was almost ten months ago now and I am still grateful for him, over that time I have seen wonders that I could only dream of. 

Halfway through thinking about everything I realised that most adventurers that don’t die retire after 100 or so years, their higher con dramatically slowing their ageing, so I still haven’t even experienced one percent of what I will over my lifetime. That made me start daydreaming about what possibly awaited me out there, filling me with a renewed sense of wanderlust, and before I knew it our dinner was over and we were all heading to our rooms. 

The next day we were supposed to be resting but I was filled with too much energy so instead I trained with my abilities. Half of the day was spent trying to control the element of my spell but no matter what I tried they only listened to me twenty percent of the time and twelve of that was down to pure luck. I didn’t let it get to me though as it was still an improvement to when I was level 5.  

The other half of the day was spent trying to sense the way mana shifted around me while I waited for my mana to fill back up. I was still getting used to it so it was incredibly confusing, imagine being able to see the way the wind flows and using that to determine where it originates from. A big spell was easy to locate as it was like a hurricane but subtle spells were incredibly difficult to locate as they barely changed the way the mana flowed. 

That said I could still tell I was improving so when the next day rolled around and we were getting prepared to go back into the dungeon I was feeling energised and ready to take anything on. Over the past month enough parties had managed to beat the fifth floor that the guild had to organise a second line for those that wanted to skip the first five floors so we couldn’t just head straight into the dungeon like we did last time. I decided to spend this time quickly looking over my status. 

My stats were pretty normal for a mage, and the only skills that were unusual were [Chaotic Magic], and [Anarchic Mana], which combined to make my spell’s element unpredictable. [Effortless Spell Retention] which let me learn spells easier than most people could. Theoretically this would be an amazing skill to have but if the spell I cast is never the one I want then it is essentially useless.  

Finally was [Chaos Surge], this tripled the power of my next spell for a huge mana cost but caused me to have absolutely no control of which spell it would be. I got it as my reward for getting to level 25 so it was still relatively new to me but since the skill made using it practically second nature I wasn’t too worried about training it. Moving on to my other skills [Lesser Mana Sense] I have already talked about. 

[Spell Sniper] simply made my next spell go double the distance it usually would and be a bit more accurate. [Magic Identification] had two modes; the first mode let me tell if an object was magical at a glance while the second mode let me tell what the magical item did after focusing on it for ten minutes. Finally, [Lesser Mana Control] is my current favourite skill, even though it took me eight months to get as it helps my spells be the element I want them to be. 

By the time I was finished going through my status it was time to go in as not many parties were ahead of us so early in the morning. This time instead of being placed in the middle of nowhere we could already see a path from where the portal dropped us. When we were on this floor last the floor didn’t have any paths but we had heard some of the other delvers talk about it so we weren’t too surprised. 

We quickly walked to the path while looking out for any monsters, it was a short distance so we easily got there without coming across anything. Looking both ways we couldn’t see any monsters so on a whim we decided to follow the path to the right. After about ten minutes of walking we stumbled across a group of slimes hanging in a tree. 

Luckily now that I had [Lesser Mana Sense] I was able to sense them so we were able to get off a sneak attack on them before they realised we knew where they were. This killed half of them in a single coordinated blow and they were all dead before any of them could even get to us. Over the next half hour we came across two more pods which were also easily dealt with before coming across the first goblin camp. 

This time the goblins waited until we were close enough to see the treehouses before attacking us. Five warriors jumped out of the trees to surround us, three in front of us and two behind, with the hobgoblin being one of the three warriors in front of us. We quickly moved into formation, Nethy lit up her Guandao as she ran to engage the two goblins behind us. At the same time Taren ran, engaging the goblin warriors in front of us.  

While Bearwynn and I took each side of Hel to make sure no one could get to our healer at the same time as Hel started to buff Taren and Nethy. While our two melee fighters were preoccupied four archers started to take pot shots at them but Baer made sure that none of their arrows reached our fighters while I sent out our own attacks. Each one of my spells were a different element but that didn’t matter as each one hit their mark, killing each of the archers in quick succession. 

I was paying too much attention to my targets to see how the rest of the battle was going but by the time I was done the goblins behind us were burning corpses and the ones in front weren’t doing much better. As we regrouped after the fight we looked like we had barely broken a sweat and quickly moved on to looting the camp, gathering enough metal to fill my backpack.  

Since the three mages didn’t have to worry about moving quickly in the middle of combat our packs were the first to be filled and I drew the short straw today. Over the next hour we took down two more groups of slime and another goblin camp before coming across a pack of thorn wolves. They also couldn’t hide from my senses so we didn’t get surprised by them this time, unfortunately they also sensed us so we didn’t get a chance to surprise them. 

Now that the pack had 5 wolves in it instead of 6 Taren was able to tank them all relatively well while Nethy moved around to attack their flank and me and Baer finished off the weakened ones. The fight ended with Taren having a few scratches so we had to stop for a while so that he could heal up but it was so much easier than our last time fighting them that we were feeling excited for the next floor. 

Speaking of it only took ten minutes before we found the portal to the next floor and decided to go through it. We didn’t need to clear the floor and we all wanted some more difficult fights to test how much we have grown.