A Dungeon’s Survival

Connie

Come on, just a little bit further! I silently urged the pair.

They were about to enter my bog, and while I had been half listening to their conversation while preparing my forces, the few key takeaways I'd gotten from it were nowhere near as important as how the next few seconds played out. The nature of my opponent's Heroic ability and the limitations of permanent enhancers were interesting and all, but I couldn't afford to fixate on any of that when losing focus could mean screwing up the execution of my next trap. It was a big one, and all I needed was for the intruders to take a few more steps.

“Hold.”

Of course, Fable wasn't going to make that easy, though. Before they could take those last steps, she called for the Hero to halt in an authoritative tone. He did.

Ugh! No, no, no!

Panic set in immediately, and worries began to race across my mind. Had it failed? Was it the Appraisal item the girl mentioned having that did it, or had she just noticed the exorbitant amount of explosive gas I'd built up in a contained pocked around the entrance to my bog? Was it simpler than that? It was entirely possible she'd noticed the wind barrier I'd set up to contain that gas instead, or she could've even sensed Loot and the Trentis above the ceiling where they were ready to do everything in their power to make the pairs' lives as difficult as possible for as long as they could.

In the end, I didn't know what it was, but I also didn't have time to waste figuring it out. I needed an alternative, something to both light the gas closer to them than the fire Crystal Puffer I'd planned to drop on their heads would and something that could lure them in closer. I didn't stop to wonder if it was a good idea or it it'd work. I just reached for my nearest alternative and acted.

Archie, I need Flame Solvent, now!

At the same time as I informed my alchemist of my needs, the man in the room below him turned to his companion and asked, “What is it?”

“Right away, mistress,” Archie's reply was instant, the same as Fable's.

“I felt something just now, a large release of mana from behind us. If I'm not mistaken, it originated from the entry room.”

What?

That caught me off guard. I'd been sure they'd noticed the trap, but that came out of nowhere. I didn't have the slightest clue what she was talking about. Fortunately, her companion was quicker on the uptake, and his following words were enough to clue me in on what had happened.

“But that's where Cudgel and the noble are!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” Fable confirmed, “I'm unsure whether it was Ivan's doing or if it was the work of the monster I sensed back there, however. With how much mana was just released, the monster having been the cause of it seems unlikely. After that Horned Draco we encountered, though, I wouldn't put it past a creature from this place. Then, there is the other possibility.”

“What possibility?”

There was a brief pause before she answered, “I find it unlikely, but the baron may have decided to take matters into his own hands.”

“Shit. We need to head back.”

Their conversation worried me some and made me feel conflicted. It would've only taken a moment to check what was going on in the first room myself, but Archie had just finished applying the potion to what I needed him to, and if I didn't act immediately, I knew I'd lose my chance. Still, I couldn't dismiss the idea of letting them turn back here, not when every second we bought could be the difference between victory and defeat. Noctis needed an estimated sixteen minutes for a round trip, after all, and at most, we'd only bought a fraction of that time.

My indecision was only momentary, however. In the end, necessity pushed me to act before I could properly weight the pros and cons of doing so. Maybe it was the wrong move, but I was reluctant to waste the advantage we'd gained by separating our opponents, and more importantly, Vie and Pee were back there. Whatever the situation was, I trusted them to handle it, and I wasn't about to let these guys interfere in their fight.

Go! I ordered the monster I'd picked for this task before turning my focus to Loot and giving her the signal she'd been waiting for, Now!

In a moment of indecision similar to my own, the mage hesitated. She'd already made it clear she didn't want to backtrack, and that caused just enough of a delay for things to fall into place. The moment she noticed, she couldn't help but to react in a way befitting her evident experience. That worked to my advantage, or at least, it should've.

“Behind you!” she called out, even as she raised her staff.

The fact that she managed to cast a spell in the next moment with enough accuracy and power to obliterate the Crystal Puffer that was dropped from the ceiling spoke to her immense skill. That in itself wasn't a problem. I'd already accepted it wouldn't work for my purposes and moved on. It was now a Horned Draco I was relying on, one that I'd given Flame Gel Excretion to and that Archie had applied Flame Solvent to the foot of. At my signal it could divert the excretion of that gel to that very same foot, feeding the solvent and producing a spark. That was all it would take to ignite the gas. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only spark in the vicinity.

Boom!

No!

Rushed as I might've been, I thought I'd planned things out carefully enough. I'd even had the draco dive at a low angle with the Hero between itself and the mage and provided a distraction for it in the form of the Crystal Puffer. All I needed was for it to bait out an attack from the Hero, drawing him further into the blast zone before igniting the gas. Before it ever got the chance to do that, however, Fable's lightning already did the trick.

Ugh! I kicked myself for not seeing this coming, but I didn't let the opportunity go to waste.

The explosion was indirect, and I doubted it did all that much to the pair, but it did create an opening. In that moment, I had a choice to make. I could've ordered the draco to activate Velocity Transference, but if an overcharged one from Adraugon couldn't finish the Hero off, I doubted this weak lizard would be able to do anything meaningful with the ability. Instead, I pivoted.

The moment the blast cleared enough for it to survive doing so, I had it dart through the smoke and narrowly zip past the Hero's neck. He was no longer my target. Instead, I aimed the lizard at the mage.

I knew she'd sense it, but that didn't matter. If she attacked, she'd run the risk of catching her ally in the blast of whatever spell she used, and that was only if she wasn't too disoriented from the explosion to cast something in the first place. It was the perfect opening, and I intended to take full advantage of it.

Crack!

A common Horned Draco couldn't hold a candle to Adraugon in terms of speed or mobility, but with twenty-one points in AGI, they weren't slow by any means, and an extra point from my Empower Bond spell certainly didn't hurt. Was it enough to seriously harm the woman? Not even close, but there was more than one way to utilize the ability, and not everything she had on her was as durable as she was.

* * *

Fable

I was quickly losing my patience with this Dungeon. Danger was one thing. I was used to that. It was part of the job. This place, however, more than dangerous, was just plain irritating, and it made no sense.

No Dungeon operated like this one, at least none that weren't already decades old at the bare minimum and certainly not from the get-go. Entire burning rooms full of blinding flashes, deafening Mandrakes, and sneak attacks from every angle were bad enough; add on monsters capable of hitting far above their levels, explosive gasses, and an eerie level of coordination between its inhabitants, and this place was something else entirely. Worse, there was something else at play here that had yet to reveal itself. I was sure of it.

[Horned Draco

Level: 1

Health: 5 (35)

Stamina: 10 (40)

Mana: 40 (100)

Stats: FORT 1 (7), VIT 2 (9), STR 3 (10), END 2 (8), SOUL 4 (10), MIND 4 (10), WILL 4 (10), COM 2 (8), DEX 14 (21), AGI 14 (21)

Skills: None

Abilities: Hoard of Dragons, Velocity Transference, Flame Gel Excretion

Description: One of the weakest draconic monsters. It is little more than a lizard with retractable flaps of skin that serve as wings that it can glide with. It has a small horn on its head and a bad temperament.]

Nothing in the creature's status could explain what I'd felt from it. It wasn't much, I might have even missed it if it weren't for the extra sensitivity my Dungeon Slayer title enhanced my Mana Sense with, but I was certain of what I'd felt. Something had been empowering it as it attacked. It was only by a minuscule amount, but between that fact and the tactics it displayed by targeting my pouch instead of me, it indicated the monster acting on something else's orders, something intelligent.

As I considered the possibilities, I fidgeted unconsciously, pulling my bag tight to my body. I'd already burned through nearly two thirds of my mana pool. Now, all because of a level one monster I hadn't been in any position to squash before it could reach me, I couldn't even replenish my reserve's safe daily limit.

Technically, it might've still been possible, but with how many of my potions cracked and mixed together. I was lucky they didn't outright explode in an alchemical fire or worse. There was no way I was drinking a drop from a vial that so much as had a crack in it now. I wasn't risking contamination from something that wasn't meant for positive consumption. As much as I hated to admit it, my overpreparedness had thoroughly been turned against me here, my propensity to always bring a diverse range of supplies resulting in an unstable mess of contaminated liquids now soaking the rest of my supplies. It was frustrating.

“Are you okay?” Sean asked, breaking me free from my thoughts, “You're, uh, going to break that if you keep squeezing it like that.”

I flushed and turned my head away from him. I hadn't even noticed I'd been clenching the bottle in my hand so hard. Breaking my last remaining Greater Mana Potion after having the rest of my supply shattered would've been the height of folly. I needed every last drop of the five hundred points of mana it could replenish from it.

“I'm fine,” I answered curtly before taking a sip of the magical liquid, “Watch your step on your left, by the way.”

“Ah, got it.”

Ordinarily, I would've frozen a path through these swamplands rather than trudging my way through them, especially once I noticed there was magical Dungeon wind creating artificial currents amidst the mud, effectively turning patches of the ground into quicksand, but I was in mana-conserving mode. Unwilling to risk getting caught unable to defend myself against a threat, it was paramount we destroy the core fueling this deathtrap as soon as possible. That was why I'd argued so hard in favor of continuing on rather than regrouping. The cost to my mana reserves would've been far too great, and even if we did manage to meet back up with the rest of our group, I likely wouldn't have had enough left to be of any real assistance to anything capable of threatening those two.

“From the right and behind us,” I announced before allowing my companion to shield me and cut down the threat.

The Horned Dracos in this place seemed endless. More aggravatingly, they kept coming one a time. It was far less effective than if they were to have all to rushed us at once, but it was certainly more annoying. It felt like any time we took a few steps forward we were having to halt our progress to deal with another minor annoyance.

Then, there was the real point of concern for me. The amount of monsters I could feel shuffling around above us was no joke, and they seemed to be moving far too deliberately for my liking. It wasn't until we'd made it half of the way across the room that it became clear what they were doing, however.

“Now!” the faintest echo of the word carried to me, muffled and dampened, but it was there.

Immediately, something changed. I sensed it before the light from our magical lanterns reached it, its existence practically screaming out warnings to my Mana Sense. It was a disgusting black ooze that poured down in streams from the ceiling, mixing with the water around us. The exact spots it came from aligned perfectly with where I'd been sensing the monsters above us. This was no trap; it was deliberate, and that made it significantly more dangerous.

“Get close to me,” I called out to Sean, “We need to move, fast.”

I was not risking playing around with whatever that stuff was. Whatever the mana cost to get us out of there would be, I was not going to hesitate to pay it.