Apinsig
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Chapter 151 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-01-23 20:08:24 +0000 UTCEntering the porter felt similar to when I entered the dungeon back at home, but the feeling was amplified, and it took a bit longer than expected. For a few moments, everything was dark and then my eyes adjusted and I could see like in any other dungeon.
Just a few moments later different abilities and spells started to light up the area. The next moment hundreds of boars-like creatures screamed like any other pig would but they did have a lot more bass in them and I could see even before the lights completely illuminated the room how they started to charge at us.
Less than a second had gone by and already the fight was on. For this fight, I was a watcher. The spell attacks of the silvers started to form but the arrows were the first to be loosed at the monsters and the first attacks to hit.
Whatever arrows they were using they were doing decent damage and then the spell hit. I could see some of the unlucky monsters die in the first attack. When over 20 people with good enough coordination hit a target, I guess that even silvers can kill a first-rank monster in moments.
The poor monsters didn't try to run they were solely focused on attack, and they had already cleared half of the room in their mad dash. When about half the distance was covered, I could see some of their tusks starting to glow with ability usage. It was at this moment when I saw the main tank rush ahead and I could see his big tower shield glowing blue with different kinds of runes.
“Aegis,” I heard the tank say and then a transparent blue shield extended from the shield that covered over half the room's width. At the start the change was subtle but I could see more and more of that monsters converging on the shield. The monsters were now well past a horse’s running speed and their change of direction came with lots of problems.
Not only could I see some of them hit one another with their abilities they were also tripping each other up. If you added some of the dying creatures falling from the raid party attacks, their charge was interrupted quite soon. The monsters started to pile up on each other and the few that escaped were quickly targeted and killed.
When the runners were killed Aoe spells started to hit the downed monsters and soon the room filled with the smell of burning flesh and hair. I was glad that the smell didn’t stay for long only as long as it took for that monster to die and it didn't take us long to finish off the room only about 10 minutes.
I already knew what should have happened in this room as it was told in the briefing, but I was still surprised at how many first-rank monsters could be killed in such a quick time span. A pleasant surprise was that without doing anything I still got some class experience. The scouts moved ahead to start clearing all the traps while the rest of us looked for monster cores and other drops that might have appeared.
I was a bit disappointed with this fight, but I also know that it wasn’t going to be this easy for the entire dungeon. I could see some discipline being handed out to some of the first ranks that attacked without permission. From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the silver mages drinking a mana potion. This surprised me as we were supposed to be managing our resources but before anything else happened it seemed that I wasn’t the only one who saw it and soon he was the one who was getting yelled at.
I was starting to feel a bit better as I was getting used to everything. The next room was a bit different as it was the first boss room, I was glad I would be able to do some damage but doing damage was a lot more difficult than I first expected. First of all, friendly fire was a thing and if you weren't careful, you could kill your party member instead of a monster. The second problem was even hitting the boss.
I was expecting a huge boss monster, but I was disappointed with the size. The huge boar monster was only the size of a big van, but the entire room size must have been at least the size of 5 football fields. The monster moved fast when it used its charge attack and even our main tank didn't take that but dodged it instead.
So, the fight was just us running after the boss while trying to do as much damage as possible while not hitting anyone friendly. I could have used my movement ability to stick to the bosses’ side and attacked it with my blade but that would mean any other mage that wanted to attack couldn’t use the side where I was on so I could only use my range attack. I contemplated using my bow, but it would have been too much of a hassle to change my weapons around and I had to be ready to tank if it was needed.
Towards the end of a fight, I did try to use my throwing knives and when I had charged them up until their breaking point I was able to do quite a lot of damage without hindering anyone else. The only problem was that I wouldn’t have enough of them to keep up these kinds of attacks for the entire dungeon delve.
There was always a sense of hurry and I believe that it didn't just come from me or the people around me but there was something in the dungeon making me uneasy. It took a bit to figure out what was happening and when I did the feeling lessened by a lot.
With that feeling overcome I could feel myself being a lot steadier and more clear-headed. Looking around I could see other people fidgeting whenever they were standing still similar to my own symptoms. I believed it best to bring it up with the Raid leaders.
We were all waiting for the scouts to clear the way to the next room, so I approached the leadership team. “Raid Party leader Tom. Backup tank #3 is reporting in. I have found a disturbing influence on the mind that the dungeon is making us feel.” I reported this loudly like I was used to but also made sure that only the leadership could hear my words. I was starting to like my ability sound isolation a lot more.
At first, they all started to look around, but they were sharp and understood quickly that only they could hear what I had to say. They asked me to explain and so I did. Two of them started to curse out loud but I could soon see every one of them break the dungeon's manipulation on them. They thanked me and I quickly moved back to my position.
When the scouts came back, I was surprised to hear that everyone was called to get close up and form a circle. I had expected them to think of an idea to fix this for the next delve but it seems that the mage Luana is quite brilliant. She started to cast her magic and we were all directed to watch as she formed a green flame and then she slowly spun around so we could all see it properly.
Whenever someone watched for more than a few seconds I could see their nervous energy disappearing while their body relaxed. The next few rooms showed the improvement that little spell made. There were a lot fewer missed spells and everyone was a lot crisper with their actions. While every room had gotten tougher and longer to clear. Now the opposite has happened, and we were doing them almost as fast as the first room.
For the first-floor end boss, I decided to use one of my throwing knives. I pumped it full of energy and waited to attack the overcrowded bear. I was quite certain that I wouldn’t be able to kill it with one attack so I did the next best thing. I channelled my inner rogue and attacked its Achilles heel. The attack worked but barely. My knives weren't made from strong enough materials to handle enough energy to truly attack the beast. But now that one of its back legs was almost useless the fight was a lot easier for the tank.
Time started to have no meaning as we were constantly attacking some sort of a new beast-type monster. The rooms with a huge amount of monsters were very easy as a combination of fire and lightning spells produced by Luana killed everything and what didn’t die was paralyzed. If we were quick enough every monster in the room was dead before they could recover.
The boss rooms were getting tougher but thanks to the main tank everything was just routine. It seems that his shield was a relic that was purposely made for these kinds of fights. It could extend a large transparent shield when there was a need to fight large groups of monsters, but it truly shined when there was only one strong enemy. It was amazing to see how the monster's attacks curved and always hit the shield.
In the previous boss room, we were fighting a boss that was half man half pig and there was real intelligence behind its eyes. But the fight was over faster than some of the other fights simply because the monster was so frustrated with that shield.
No matter what it did or how it attacked with its huge hammer it couldn't help but hit the shield. Eventually, it was so angry that it threw away the weapon and tried to punch the tank. When that didn't work it tried to grapple.
I believe that grappling would have eventually worked but it had used up too much time trying everything else and we were able to take it down before anything bad happened. Still, it almost felt like the shield was bending reality so that every attack would hit it, but I wasn’t complaining as I didn’t need to fight against the wielder.
Then it finally began my first real job. We had finally reached the first room that I need to actively tank. The fight started off like any other but soon the main boss howled and out of nowhere other wolf-like creatures luckily a lot smaller than the boss started to appear. I needed to take the left side of the room, so I didn’t waste a moment.
“Come and fight me you little puppies,” I yelled so that my taunt ability would activate. I made certain that only my side of the room would be affected but even I was a bit surprised at how effective it was. All the monsters stop their movements towards us and as one they all focused on me and I could see the pure rage in their eyes.
I swallowed involuntarily but I couldn’t freeze up. Using my movement skill, I started to circle the monsters so their backs would be towards the raiding party giving them a clear line of sight. Getting past them was harder than expected as it seems all of them activated some sort of an ability to help them chase me down.
For the rest of the fight I barely had time to attack or defend using my shield mostly, I was just running and dodging so they could not overwhelm me with numbers. Their absolute rage against me made them disregard any other attack including the attacks from other wolves who were trying to get to me first. The situation was so bad that before we could kill all the wolves the only ones living had most of their legs broken but they were still trying to crawl towards me.
Because of that, there was a moment of pause on the attacks as everyone was a bit puzzled about why the monsters were so angry with me. Usually with enough pain even taunt abilities were shaken off but it didn't seem to be working with them. But this helped us finish the room even faster as the range fighter could be directed to the other side of the room. We only needed melee fighters to finish off the struggling monsters.
When this fight was finally over, I was congratulated for my excellent performance but there wasn’t a big pause before we all started to move forward. Previously when we cleared a room everyone was happy but now after every room, everyone got more serious. The reason was that now with every room we were getting dangerously close to the three-boss room. Arguably the hardest fight in this dungeon.
