Chapter 9: Lizardmen
"Well, if none of you has anything more they'd like to do or say, I think we should go out there and start fighting. Catch them off guard before they even know we're here," Kim said.
"Wait!" Elmo said. "Shouldn't we decide if we should try to reason with the lizardmen or not?"
"The kid has a good point," Jonas remarked. "We may get the upper hand at first with catching them off guard, but I don't think that we'll be able to maintain that advantage if we can't kill them right away."
"How strong can they be? I mean, we saw how fast those kobolds went down, right?" Kim said, sounding rather irritated.
"That's because the kobolds are weak. The lizardmen are a lot stronger. For one thing, they have a good amount more HP. If there's three of them, like Jonas said, then I really don't think you'll e able to take all three down that quickly," Elmo said. "If you do manage that, then you'llprobably go through all of your stamina and MP, so you could be vulnerable for a while after that."
"I don't have any MP," Kim replied, looking like she'd just tasted something rather bitter. "But I understand what you mean. I can't say I'd be able to take down a lizardman that fast either, but what should we do otherwise?"
"Well, Kobolds will attack us on sight, unless there's a kobold hero or something present. At which point they'll look to the hero for guidance. I don't know if the lizardmen will fill that same role or not, but if we go around the corner, I would say we do so fully armed, but we should only fight in a defensive manner. If they attack us. If they don't, we can try to communicate with them and see if we can avoid a fight. Even if we don't understand them, they might be able to understand us."
"Shouldn't we be trying to level up?" Jonas asked. "I mean, we were told that we need to defeat a boss around here. In order to do that, we probably need to be leveling up as often as we can."
"What good is leveling up going to be if you kill yourself in the process?" Elmo retorted. "Yes, leveling up would help us a lot, but at the same time, we probably should pick our battles carefully. If we don't then, we're likely going to be overwhelmed before we know it." Elmo paused as something occurred to him. "Maybe that's what happened to the one who died. He might have thought he'd be able to defeat that minotaur and found himself outmatched. Or maybe he just fought until he wore himself out. Regardless, dead is still dead, no matter what you did to get to that state."
"What are you suggesting then?" Elin asked.
"Let's go around the corner, kill the kobolds if they attack us, and deal with the Lizardmen only if they look to be hostile. If they're not, then we don't fight them. If needed, I can use some other magic on them to help in battle, while Elin keeps Kim as full of HP as possible," Elmo said.