Up on the second floor of the mages guild in an office an old man and another man were sharing a bottle of good old whiskey, the younger man was also smoking a cigar that made blue glowing smoke. “How have you been Arch? I see you are still smoking those cigars that I got for your birthday” said Griffer, he was busy rubbing his beard like the old sage that he was “well you know pretty good other than this whole dungeon wacky. I’m not some battle junky like Buckshot Billy so I haven’t been in too many fights since Paradisea expeditions” Arch laid back on the couch he was sitting on. “Ha that is a name I truly haven’t heard in awhile. How is that madman Buckshot Billy recently?” Arch puffed out blue smoke and he started talking “He has been doing pretty good since he hasn’t been going out fighting because his boyfriend Dynamite Dan got badly injured in a fight with a quake wyvern.”
“Ha yeah that is probably the only thing that would cause those boys to stop fighting monsters like their life depends on it.” Griffer stood up and turned, walked to the window that showed the city outside and watched as people lived their lives while he drank his whiskey. “Oh stop that old man act I’m literally three years older than you. Don’t treat all of us like we are your grandchildren.” Arch had already got up and had slapped Griffer on the back of the head making him slightly choke on the whiskey. “You do remember that for the last 100 years I have been running the whole guild. I did not get that role because I was the oldest or not I g-” before Griffer could finish what he was going to say Arch interrupted.
“Yeah the reason why was you were the only one of the sweaty losers from earth that had enough empathy to know that abandoning or betraying the others would cause the least amount of deaths for us and the people of this world.” In a blink Arch was back to laying on the couch. “I was going to say that I was the best at keeping us off each other's throats but I guess what you said was true too.” Griffin too was back in the seat he started this conversation in, it was quite the nice chair since it was actually a cloud that he had shaped into a chair. They continued to chat for another couple of hours before getting back to work, but even then they seemed to be distracted from the tasks they completed because they knew that on the horizon a storm was brewing and it seems like it’s going to be quite the big one.
Skitter Nail woke up for the first time with a migraine which he was learning that it was even worse than when he was low on mana, the level up party he and Skar did the other day was so incredibly good that Skitter thinks even a dragon would get jealous for not being apart of it. As he was thinking about last night he felt as the floor he was laying on snored very loudly, it seems that at some point last night he found himself laying on the sleeping lizard and chose her as his bed for the night. Making a smart decision Skitter Nail got off Skar as slow and as quietly as he could so as to not anger the lizard that could at this range kill him without any trouble, luckily for him it seems like she was deep asleep since she didn’t wake up for another hour.
The new day was like any other, dust fell from the ceiling slightly glazing most surfaces with a look of superficial antiqueness even though it has only been a dozen or so hours since the last time Skitter cleaned up, it seems with the more he grows the less rat like his behaviors become and the first to go was his apathy for cleanliness. Their breakfast was nothing since they both are mobs inside of a dungeon so they just freely get fed by the dungeons mana, that doesn’t mean that mobs don’t like to eat it just means it is more of a pastime for monster morale. It was about lunchtime that they chose to go out and hunt a monster, but this time instead of goblins since it is still bright in here they choose to find themselves a sewer wolf to kill.
They chose to do an ambush when they finally found and moved ahead of a sewer wolf, the ambush tactic they did with the wolf was different in the fact that Skitter was using himself as live bait. When the wolf turned the corner and saw the rat it began to rush forward like a starved beast, by the time the wolf figured that something was wrong it stopped itself from launching itself into the open maw of the sludge dripper that was hiding in a large pipe. It was with this same tactic that they killed another four sewer wolves before it started to get dark, the trip back home was calm and they didn’t get into any unnecessary fights.
At night they ambushed more goblins at a different camp and got another four kills that day, they made sure it was a different camp so as not to get any retribution from a whole camp of goblins. That was how their routine for the next four days was like as they tried to slowly level up their race, class, and their skills but they didn’t get any levels so far, the required exp for anything other than the first or second level is very high and it just gets hard and hard to get the needed exp the farther you climb in levels. It was the morning of their sixth day on the third floor that they began to notice that they were actually kind of slightly hungry, this is when the true chaos began in the dungeon as it wasn’t only them that noticed that they were actually hungry.
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Monsters that normally don’t go out and hunt started too changing the whole ecosystem, like the torch roach for example they normally stay passive unless you wander into their territory so they normally wouldn’t eat for days on end but now they were out scorching up the place. It was such a large crazy change that Skitter Nail didn’t even notice that the fact that there were less of those towering creatures around recently, he was trying to find a way to keep up with the endless stomach that was Skar. with this every chaotic last day it marks a whole week on this floor and yet they still hadn’t gotten a level in anything other than a skill level in [Stunning Blow] and [Mana Control], he got that second level in his [Mana Control] after trying to force feed dungeon mana to Skar but failed when he couldn’t move the sluggish sickly magic.
The only good thing that had happened recently was that the two of them were getting better at fighting together which was probably helped that Skar’s old partner Phang was a mage too, it took a lot of time and a lot of wine for her to get over her partner’s death to the creeping mud slime especially due to the fact she wasn’t able to eat the corpse which is a big part of most reptile culture. Due to the chaos around the dungeon they chose that hunting at night was now much more deadly since any sound at night makes the roaches scorching. They became a menace to both sewer wolves and goblins alike to the point that the goblins were making very ugly bounty posters and the wolves were forming packs so as to not be ambushed as easily.
The monster on this floor’s awareness of them was reaching a point where Skitter Nail and Skar were thinking about trying to reach the next floor soon before the monster found their hideout, when it came to grudges monsters were known to be vengeful for even the smallest of things so Skitter knew that if they didn’t leave soon than they will be thrown to the roaches. But the two of them wanted to still try and get a level in at least something so they stayed for now and if they didn’t get a level in a day or two they would fight the boss and go down to the fourth floor. It was with that decision that they wanted to do an actual attack on a goblin camp, yes a small camp but it still had eight or so goblins so it was still somewhat a threat.
The camp was inside of the maze using the smaller tunnels to make checkpoints for the goblin patrols and hunting bands, the wooded wall was guarded by two goblins in front of the gate while two more ranges stood on the walls. They knew that they couldn’t kill all of the guards at once so instead of going in silently they were going to do so loud, just as the lights went from dim to their normal brightness Skitter Nail casted a [Ember] blinding the already tired guards. Skar [Dash]ed forward batting aside one of the gateways guards with a [Stunning Blow] while following it up with a [Heavy Strike] to kill the other guard, Skitter was launching [Mana Bolt]s at both rangers on the wall hitting and crippling one of the goblins while the other had a movement skill of some kind that allow it to dodge.
It was at this time that the other goblins of the camp reacted to the commotion, on both fronts of defense two more guards appeared to help out. The two new melee combatants block Skar from killing the stunned goblin using normal stabs they dealt four and six damage to her, the two new rangers couldn’t do more than dodge like the other guard as Skitter Nail rained magical attacks from a safe distance. Before they raided the camp Skitter Nail did some more research on how goblins fight and what he found was that their melee warriors were trained to have mostly defense skills, while the goblins rangers have skills that needed them to stay still to activate and use.
The fight went on as the warriors weren't able to badly damage Skar while she slowly whittled down their defenses, Skitter Nail was having an easier time as the rangers got tired before he ran out of mana and he was able to cripple them to the point where they were useless for the rest of the fight. Slowly letting his mana regan as he slowly flanked the guards at the gate, when everything was ready he shot the backs of the guards making them drop their defenses out of surprise. With her almost famous combo of [Dash] and [Heavy Strike] Skar was able to kill one of the warriors, from there the fight didn’t last that much longer and the victories were the rat and the lizard duo.
It was with this success that they chose that it was time to go fight the boss and leave this floor that was starting to get restless and actually dangerous since the monster got more and more angry, that was proven by the fact that it seemed like the wolf packs and goblin tribes were starting a truce to hunt them down. But when the duo made it to the boss room’s entrance they felt like something was wrong, their feelings were proven right when they entered the boss room and they saw that the door that led to the lower floor was a pile of rubble. Even with the crazy thought that the boss left its room to go down to the next floor they both needed to get levels so they decided to still go down to the fourth floor even if there is a boss roaming it.
