Chapter 287 - Sticky Situation (Patreon)

Reivyn and his Party stood outside the portal, checking their gear and going over the information from the dossier. They had consulted with some of the other Adventurers in the tent city so as not to step on anyone’s toes, and a proper time rotation had been set up. There weren’t so many groups as to fill every time slot, but to keep things working smoothly, entry times were agreed upon. They just had to wait a few more minutes before the clock struck the right time.

Reivyn finished double checking all of his gear and set his mind to going over the information from the guide.

This particular Dungeon is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it starts on the outside of the cave, so there’s actually some space to move around the outside. There have been instances where Burning Echinacea have been found inside the instance, but it’s not guaranteed. That might cut down on our time to look for the ingredient.

Another interesting aspect of this Dungeon is the fact that it goes up. The level of difficulty of the monsters and bosses actually goes from bottom to top, with the most difficult floor being the top one.

There are only four accessible floors in this Dungeon with the bottom floor filled with slimes and a boss ooze. According to the dossier, the difference between slimes and oozes are their ability to use magic. Slimes are just corrosive, mindless puddles with a particular Affinity they absorb, but oozes can actually cast low and intermediate level Spells despite also being mindless. The spells are pure instinct, though it’s a rather interesting phenomenon all things considered.

In the real world, the cave system and mines go well below this floor, but in the Dungeon, the path is inaccessible due to being filled with a corrosive underground lake. I don’t know if that existed when the Dungeon formed or if it’s System shenanigans to act as a barrier. What I do know is that the corrosive nature metals anything up to just below Tier 6, including people. If one thinks about it by percentages, anything at 5.99 and below can’t safely explore the lake. The dossier mentions there once was a Tier 6 party who delved into the waters, but they didn’t find anything worthwhile, at least not publicly.

The second-to-bottom floor was a nest of basilisks. They had evolved to petrify and then consume the slimes as their main food source. It kind of makes sense on paper, though it doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it. It just has to be the way the Dungeon works, but I doubt we’d ever run into a similar situation in the real world. I mean, turning corrosive slime into stone then eating it? What? Dungeons do Dungeon things, though, I guess.

The basilisks’ petrifying ability, according to the dossier, isn’t anything for a Tier 5 individual to worry about. I’m not Tier 5, and neither are most of the Party, but we have Tier 5 Stats and Skills. Hopefully it’s the Stats - probably Vitality - that matter and not the Tier. As far as I know, one’s Tier doesn’t have any tangible benefit besides the Class. I guess we’ll find out.

The second-to-bottom floor, the second easiest, was actually the only floor that gave the Party any pause. Luckily it was completely optional with the way the cave system was set up. The entrance to each floor was from the main stairwell located right at the front of the cave. The plan was for Reivyn to expose himself to the petrification with Refix standing by to interfere and rescue him, and his mother and fiance would likely be able to resolve any problems with their Magic if things didn’t go well. It was a calculated risk.

If things didn’t go according to plan, they would just skip the floor.

The third floor, the main floor upon walking into the cave, is a giant open space that contains just one monster: a cave giant. They’re basically bigger, badder ogres with slightly more intelligence. I don’t think we’ll have a problem with it. Kimberly’s dodge-vanguard style is particularly suited to large, slow-moving monsters. The cave giants are faster than ogres, of course, but not anything close to being too fast for Kimberly.

The fourth floor, or the floor above the cave giant’s abode, is the most difficult. There’s a path to another floor above, but it’s caved in, and all expeditions that have tried mining it out have found that the cave-in is deep enough that it’s not worth pushing into. As far as anyone knows, the cave-in is ubiquitous on the higher floor.

The fourth floor contains a small goblins tribe. While regular goblins are nuisance creatures and it seems counterintuitive that they would occupy the upper floor, this goblin tribe was composed of hobgoblins almost exclusively. The only exception was the boss, which was a hobgoblin shaman specializing in Earth Affinity Mana who summons and manipulates Earth Elementals.

Hobgoblins are actually stronger than their Orc counterparts which is why goblin tribes enslaved by Orcs are routinely culled to prevent any Hobgoblins from evolving. That would also explain why there isn’t an Orc presence in the Tier 5 region as the humanoid monster above goblins considering the larger tribes lead by hobgoblins and shamans.

Apparently, according to the local Adventurers, the Tier 6 Region connected to this one is filled with Tier 6 nuisance goblins enslaved by Tier 6 Ocs, but we’re not going there any time soon. I can just imagine in my mind the history of the Regions. This Region was once explored by Orcs with their goblin slaves, and upon them growing powerful enough, they migrated to the Tier 6 Region, but some of the goblins either escaped or were left behind, and they filled in the power vacuum.

Anyway, the hobgoblins are fast, strong, and cunning while the shaman is an expert with Earth Magic and a strong defense with its Earth Elementals. That fight should be right up our alley, though.

“Alright, we all ready to go?” Refix asked as he looked over everyone in the Party.

“Sure thing, boss,” Teilon quipped.

“We’re good,” Reivyn answered, sharing a look with Kefira and Serilla.

“Ready when you are, honey,” Ameliyn responded.

“Right, okay. Remember the plan for the first floor. We’ll buff the armor and weapons of the vanguard while the Casters take care of destroying the slimes and ooze. Kimberly and Serilla will stand in front to prevent the slimes from attacking the Casters while the rest of us rain death from above. I’ll be using my ethereal armaments to contribute.” Refix glanced at Teilon. “You’ll just have to sit this one out. There’s not really much for you to do in this situation. Maybe you’ll evolve your Phasing Ability to affect Space in the future, but for now that’s only good for avoiding this fight.”

“Yeah, I know,” Teilon said, shrugging. “I’m not too hung up about it. Then again, that’s an excellent idea, evolving my ability to affect Space.” Teilon shared a look with Kefira.

“I can definitely look into helping with that,” Kefira nodded her head. “Researching such an angle would probably be really good for my advancement, too.”

“Good! Well, let’s not waste any more time,” Refix said, turning around to face the portal.

Refix led the Party forward, and one by one, they stepped through the entrance to the Dungeon. Light swirled around them and after a short moment, Reivyn found himself standing just on the other side of the Portal they just walked through. He glanced back and noticed the exact same Portal peacefully floating in space, but the tent city was nowhere to be found.

Reivyn scanned the outside of the cave system for any Burning Echinacea. He didn’t see any nearby, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any inside the Dungeon, just that they might be outside his Divine Sense’s range.

“How far does the Dungeon extend outside the cave system?” Reivyn asked. It wasn’t something particularly mentioned in the dossier.

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Refix stroked his chin. “It would be safe to assume, considering we’re starting outside, that we can move at least laterally on the outside as far as we can on the inside. The same is probably true vertically, too. I don’t see any reason we would do so, but we could probably dig down at least to the level of the corrosive lake. Why?”

Reivyn shrugged.

“Might as well go look for the Burning Echinacea while we have the opportunity. If we can find enough in here, we won’t have to spend hours wandering about outside, and if the Dungeon extends further on the outside than just what can be traversed on the inside, there’s actually a pretty large area to search.”

Everyone shared a look with each other, but nobody spoke up against the idea.

“Alright,” Refix said. “We’ll split up. Half will go one way then up the path above the cliff if it’s accessible, coming down the other side, and the other half will go down the mountainside as far as they can and search that area.”

“Sounds like a plan, bossman!” Teilon gave a little salute.

“Alright, then. Teilon, Kimberly, and I will go to the right and circle down the mountainside. Reivyn, Ameliyn, Kefira, and Serilla will go left and go up the cliff if they can. If not, just circle down below like us and we’ll meet in the middle.”

“Got it,” Reivyn replied.

The Party split up and walked opposite each other along the cliff face. There was no vegetation growing on the sheer cliff face, so Reivyn kept his senses direct further down the mountainside. The cliff face was just over a hundred yards on either side of the cave entrance to the path that flattened out a bit and led upward.

They didn’t find anything of note on their trek along the cliff face. Interestingly enough, the Dungeon did extend over a dozen yards beyond the path that led up, so the group trudged up the slope. The cliff face was a couple hundred feet up, so it didn’t take long for the group to reach the top. Because of the angle of the slope and the cliff being straight up and down, though, they had to circle back around to reach the edge of the cliff once more.

Reivyn peered down over the edge.

“Huh, there’s a bit of a shelf here,” Reivyn commented.

The others joined him to look down. About fifty feet down, or so, the cliff cut into the mountainside at a right angle, creating a shelf about thirty yards wide. Peering down, Reivyn spotted a clump of Burning Echinacea.

“Bingo!” He pointed.

“Great, but how do we get down there?” Kefira asked. “I can jump us down there, but I can only do three of us, and we have four. I guess I could jump twice if I need to…”

She trailed off as she looked at Ameliyn expectantly.

“I can get down on my own,” Ameliyn said.

She followed her words by stepping off the edge. Instead of plummeting down, she was surrounded by Mana and she gently floated down. The other three shared a glance before Kefira held her hands out to Reivyn and Serilla. They each grasped hands and Kefira jumped them down to the shelf.

They arrived instantly and had to wait for Ameliyn to float down. She didn’t waste any time and let gravity pull her down at a decent speed. She reached the shelf top in just a couple of seconds.

The group marched over to the flowers and dug them up. There was a decent sized patch, and they ended up with their quota with more to spare if they needed it.

“Might as well grab some extras to sell,” Reivyn shrugged.

It was a Dungeon, so there was no need to leave things to grow for future expeditions to find. Each instance was distinct and forever lost upon resetting. The group pulled up all the flowers.

“Oh, look at this!” Kefira exclaimed.

She held up one of the flowers. “Held” within the grasp of the flower's roots was a Skill Shard. Reivyn’s eyebrows raised as he suddenly sensed it with his Divine Sense. Before it was pulled up, it just looked like it was part of the flower to his Divine Sense.

“Weird, I didn’t Sense it until you pulled it up,” Reivyn commented. “I wonder if we missed any others on our journey here because I couldn’t see them.”

“Probably, but it’s not a big deal,” Ameliyn said. “Besides, we’re still technically pretty close to the outpost and the area is pretty picked clean. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Adventurers snagged the Skill Shards associated with the Blood Roses and left the thorns, all things considered.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Reivyn nodded his head. “Well at least I know. If we want to maximize Skill Shard acquisition, we gotta dig through all the resources we find.”

They found one other Skill Shard while pulling up the flowers and storing them away. The group then continued walking along the shelf top. Now that they finished filling their quota, they didn’t feel the need to go over every inch and go back to the top of the cliff. They simply walked until reaching the far end where they reenacted their previous methods to jump down to the path.

The two groups quickly met back up at the entrance to the cave, the Portal floating silently to the side.

“Anything?” Refix asked. His tone indicated he wasn’t optimistic.

Reivyn smiled and pulled out their haul, including the two Skill Shards, handing them over.

“Nice!” Teilon high-fived Reivyn as Refix inspected the flowers and Shards.

“Good. That saves us a bit of time,” Refix simply nodded and stored the items away. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to it.”

The Party formed up and headed to the cave. Just like all the other Dungeons he’d been in, there was an ethereal light enabling them to see within about thirty feet of themselves without having to carry torches or other types of lighting. If they wanted to see further, they could use their Magic, but they didn’t see a need to at this point. They would probably employ some Magic lights on the last two floors considering the hill giant was huge and the hobgoblins were cunning.

Upon entering the cave, it extended further in a tight tunnel for a ways and there was a spiraling ramp just to the right of the entrance about ten yards in. They immediately headed to the spiraling ramp and headed down.

The dossier mentioned that the slimes’ Affinities were random, so Reivyn wouldn’t know which Mana to use to imbue the armor and weapons with until they spotted the slimes. Luckily, the dossier also mentioned that the Affinity was uniform for all slimes and ooze per instance.

Each floor was spaced considerably far apart, but based on the nature of the Dungeon and the lack of monsters to fight on the ramps, they quickly made their way to the bottom floor. There were slimes ambling about immediately inside the tunnel leading into the bottom floor, and they had a bit of a red tint to them. Reivyn threw an Identify at them just in case.

[Metal Smelting Slime]
[Tier 5: Level 30]
[It’s supposedly a Lethal Threat, but who knows anymore]

Reivyn rolled his eyes at the System’s antics. It was getting more and more belligerent.

Considering the System is ancient, there’s no way me interacting with it has had such a big impact on it to give it personality, Reivyn thought. It must be my soul interacting with it. It’s either my soul interpreting the tone more towards my own personality, or it has better synergy with more and more interaction as my soul grows to pick up more. More things to research.

Reivyn put the thoughts to the back of his mind and set about imbuing the armor and weapons of everyone. He didn’t just focus on the vanguard. One never knew if a slime would get past them or not in the future to threaten the casters and ranged combatants, and Reivyn had plenty of Mana to spare, so there was no reason to skimp. He used Metal and Fire Mana for the infusion. The wording implied it was Fire, but specifically mentioning Metal was a clue, so he included both.

“We’re good,” he whispered. He didn’t know if the slimes would be able to “hear” him or not, but they had some sort of sensory ability, at least.

After one final ready check, Kimberly and Serilla stepped out into the tunnel. The slimes didn’t immediately pay them any attention, so they advanced forward. Refix was directly behind the two girls, followed by Ameliyn, Kefira, and Reivyn, and Teilon brought up the rear.

As soon as they had some clearance and lines of sight, the three casters plus Refix opened up with their attacks. There were three slimes moving about in front of them. Suddenly ethereal weapons slashed and slammed into them. Celestial bolts that, if one looked close enough, were star-shaped rained down on top of them. Space blades sliced through them and spears of Ice impaled them.

The slimes immediately seemed to orient on the Party despite there being no noticeable shift in how they were facing. They slowly started waddling closer to the Party while bits of slime chipped off and dissolved.

Not every attack did a lot of damage, but there was at least a little bit of attrition for every magical strike. Some did a lot of damage, like the Celestial bolts and Ice spears. Surprisingly, the Space blades didn’t do much lasting damage. They sliced right through the slimes, but the only damage was to the parts directly hit by the blade and the slimes simply reattached together along the seams once the blades passed through.

Kefira immediately noticed the lack of effectiveness in her attacks and switched her Mana to copy Reivyn’s Ice spears. She and Reivyn shared a quick glance.

“I don’t just have Space Affinity, you know,” she smirked. “It’s just never been a problem until now.”

The slimes moved slow enough that they only traveled a dozen feet before they were completely dissolved into a gooey mess. They didn’t contain anything like a core that could be focused on. One had to do enough damage to remove the consistency of the entire blob to “kill” them.

“Those things were a lot more annoying than expected,” Refix said. “It didn’t strain us, or anything, but they sure can take a hit.

“Alright, let’s finish up this floor so we can fight something more exciting.”

The Party continued forward.

The slimes on the floor weren’t anything special. There were just a lot of them and they were annoying to kill quickly. Their set up ensured they were never in any danger and Teilon kept an eye out for any that they might have missed somehow sneaking up on their rear.

The floor branched off to multiple directions from the main shaft. They had to walk down each shaft to the end to make sure they cleared out all of the slimes. It wouldn’t do to have a slime show up in the middle of the boss fight. Reivyn didn’t think they could do too much if it was just one or two, but if they ignored several shafts and attracted dozens of slimes all at once, they would be in trouble.

It took them a couple of hours to clear out all the slimes before they could walk to the end of the main corridor to where the corrosive lake sat on the next ramp leading further down. The spiral ramp entrance came into view and Reivyn could see the water tepidly sitting there. Occasionally a drip of water from above would drop down into the lake.

“Where’s the ooze?” Teilon spoke up. Everyone was looking around.

“I’m pretty sure the lake is the ooze,” Refix commented after a moment. “One way to find out…”

He sent an ethereal hammer up above the lake and brought it down on the surface. The ethereal hammer head struck the top of the lake causing ripples to emanate out in concentric circles.

Nothing happened as the Party held their breath and observed, then, all of a sudden, the water started boiling and took on a reddish tint. The boiling bubbles continued to grow in size before a bubble half the size of the little lake popped up and turned into the shape of a much larger slime. It had a mouth with a gooey mouth with teeth made of slime. It opened wide and roared at the Party.

Reivyn and the others immediately began casting their Spells at the ooze. In Reivyn’s vision Mana swirled around the ooze and turned into fiery slags of metal before launching at the Party. Kimberly didn’t usually use a shield, but for this floor she was equipped with one. Her and Serilla made sure to intercept the projectiles and block them with their Mana-infused shields and armor.

Reivyn noticed the bits of fiery metal stuck to the armor and shield even after the Mana escaped them. It raised the temperature of their metal armor as well as started to weigh them down pretty quickly.

Reivyn temporarily halted his assault on the ooze and used his Mana to super-cool the slag and pop it off where it was stuck. He rushed up to the two girls and added a layer of Ice Mana to the Mana already imbued into their gear. Hopefully the super cooling of the Ice and the slick properties would prevent more metal from sticking and heating up the metal armor.

His conjecture was correct as the hail of fiery slag bounced off the shields and armor, but he kept an eye on it as the heat ate through his Ice Mana quickly. He cycled between launching Ice Spears and renewing the Mana on their gear.

The ooze was immobile and Cast Magic purely on instinct, so there was no need for any fancy tactics in the fight. Eventually, the mass of ooze was reduced enough that it finally melted back down into the lake. There was no difference in the volume of the water, and Reivyn finally understood why it was so corrosive.

“Well that was something,” Teilon said with a laugh. “Magic-slinging goop. Fun.”

“Yeah, at least it’s Experience,” Reivyn answered.

Teilon yawned and stretched exaggeratedly.

“Quite a relaxing Dungeon so far, if you ask me,” he said.

Reivyn wiped sweat from his brow and observed the others breathing a bit harder than normal. He rolled his eyes and flicked his sweat at his friend.

“Shaddup.”

“Hey, hey, that’s gross!” Teilon dodged to the side.

“You’ll get your workout in the following floors,” Reivyn said. “I vote Teilon scouts each floor by himself before we tackle them. Who knows what surprises lie in wait that the dossier left out.”

“I second it,” Kefira spoke up.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Refix nodded his head.

“Hey now! There’s jokes, and then there’s jokes. We don’t even know if the Basilisks’ petrification will harm me or not, yet.”

“Then you better not get spotted,” Reivyn clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll be ready to pull your statue out of danger if need be.”

Teilon kicked an invisible rock with his hands in his pockets.