Chapter 43 – Go Big or Go Home

“Fuck!” I shout as the three new enemies leap down the stairs. Three more!? That’s way too many! I don’t have any underlings left to stop them!

The enemy Prowler takes up position at the top of the stairs and I can see him taking aim at me. I throw myself to the side, just narrowly dodging the bolt that flies past where my head just was. That was close.

Not one to lose any time, I target the Prowler and start casting another spell. The spell hits and the Prowler’s body slumps together, his face contorting into a relaxed grimace. Meanwhile, my dwarven Thug disengages from the closest brawl and moves to block the stairs, stopping the newest arrivals dead in their tracks.

Crap, I’m running out of options here. If I don’t do anything, some of my underlings might die. Fuck! There is no other choice. “Fight Dirty!”

My underlings’ weapons glow softly as my skill enhances their damage. “Kill them all!” I shout as I jump back to my feet. I keep my eyes glued to the still dazed Prowler up the stairs, preparing to cast another spell as soon as his daze ends. I’m starting to run out of mana and I can only cast it one more time before I run out. Calm is a costly spell and I don’t have enough Wisdom to keep my regeneration at a sustainable level for long term combat. This is why I decided to use one of my most powerful abilities. I just don’t think I can keep us alive long enough to end this fight without any casualties otherwise.

As soon as I throw my spell for the fourth and final time this fight, the first notifications are starting to roll in.

[You have slain Human Prowler(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[You have slain Gnome Thug(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

Excellent! My skill accelerated the battle, freeing up more of my underlings to help keep their reinforcements at bay. One of my half-orcs immediately moves over to assist my Dwarf while the Cutthroat moves up to support him. As I’ve already run out of mana, I’m effectively useless for the remainder of the fight. I will be able to cast the spell one more time in about a minute, but I’m afraid the fight won’t last that long. I need to find an alternate way to stop the Prowler or else he will wreak havoc on the rest of my underlings.

“Hey, you!” I point at my free Cutthroat. “Climb up the side of the stairs and stop the Prowler! We can’t allow him to get off another shot!” I order him before I take cover between my two Prowlers. “And you two.” I address my Prowlers. “Focus fire on that bastard! Cover the Cutthroat!”

My Prowlers launch their projectiles towards the Prowler, hitting their mark square in the chest. The impact is enough to break the Prowler out of his stupor though and he quickly takes a step back up the stairs to reload in cover.

[You have slain Wood Elf Prowler(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[You have slain Human Thug(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[You have slain High Elf Thug(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

The battle goes well as the enemies on the ground floor are being killed off one by one. The battle is turning heavily in my favor, but the remaining three enemies are tough to beat. Keeping the stairs covered, they have the advantage of higher ground, and it helps their Prowler to have free reign on my underlings. I need to find a way to immobilize him, quickly.

The rest of my underlings charge towards the stairs, intent on brute-forcing their way past the defending Thugs. Before they arrive at the stairs though, the enemy Prowler emerges from the top of the stairs. Before my own Prowlers can stop him, he takes aim and launches a bolt towards my dwarven Thug. Being too occupied keeping the enemy Thugs in check, she fails to dodge the bolt that connects with her neck. Blood splatters across the room as she loses her footing, falling backwards. Fuck! That must have been a critical hit.

My eyes are drawn toward her rapidly dropping health bar, and my chest constricts as I realise she has less than ten percent health left. Shit! I can’t let her die. The enemy Thug she was fighting takes a step forwards, grinning at the Dwarf as he raises his shortsword for a final strike.

“No!” I shout as I sprint forwards towards my fallen Thug. The enemy’s gaze wanders toward me, and confusion flickers across his eyes as he hesitates. That’s enough time for me to launch myself towards him, shoulder tackling him to the ground.

The enemy Thug is thrown backwards and his head impacts the bottom of the stairs behind him. A bone-chilling crunch erupts from his neck. I don’t pay much attention to him, however, as I immediately roll myself backwards and out of harm's way. I sense Cobra shoving himself forwards to take my spot at the frontline as my hand rummages through my inventory. I fish out a healing potion and quickly remove the stopper and force the vial into my dwarven Thug’s mouth. Her health points are blinking red, but I soon release a breath of relief as her health bar starts to slowly fill.

The fight is still raging around me though, and by the time I can reorient myself, the battle is almost over. My Cutthroat finished climbing the stairs and is laying waste to the enemy Prowler that already looks like a pincushion after the focused fire from my Prowlers. At the bottom of the stairs, the arrival of Cobra quickly turned the tide as the two enemy Thugs are being overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of my Lieutenant. It only takes ten seconds after that for the battle to come to an end.

[You have slain Human Prowler(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[You have slain Dark Elf Thug(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[You have slain Half-Elf Thug(10). Gain 30 Experience.]

[Calm has leveled up to Novice 9.]

I release a deep breath. Damn, that was close. I really can’t explain why I ended up charging at the enemy Thug. I know it was idiotic, but my body reacted on instinct. It was as if there was some insistent voice at the back of my mind, telling me that I can’t afford to lose an underling this early in the quest. Sure, losing the Thug might actually have turned out to be fatal for the quest as a whole, but me dying would have been even worse so. I should really refrain from doing that in the future, but fighting against one's instincts is no easy task.

The battle turned out well though. We managed to kill eight enemies without taking any losses, but it was a hard-fought victory. The Thief Lord is clearly not meant to fight in a fair battle, and this fight really highlighted the class’ weakness. I guess I didn’t choose the most optimal way to deal with the situation and I don’t think I was meant to fight all eight enemies at the same time to begin with. It’s only dumb luck and the result of my deep pockets that my underlings are overgeared. I don’t think the battle would have gone half as good if some of my underlings had sub-par equipment.

I need to learn from this. So far, I’ve been building my squad to imitate the classic group composition that is common in roleplaying games, with an equal focus on defence and offence. This is my mistake. So far, I have four ‘tanks’, two ‘melee DPS’ and two ‘ranged DPS’ in my group. It’s a balanced squad, able to hold their ground against an equally strong foe in a straight-up fight. It’s a flexible group, able to deal with most issues except an extended fight. This is where I fail.

This battle really showed that head-to-head fights are not my thing. I shouldn’t build my squad to survive in a straight-up fight, because I shouldn’t fight fair to begin with. Looking through my skills, it should have been obvious that my abilities provide strong boosts for a short amount of time. Instead of thinking about winning all fights, I should think about trying to end the fight before it really begins, or retreat and try again later. There shouldn’t be anything in-between. Go big, or go home.

I really need to sit down and come up with a plan on how to develop my underlings from here on out. This right here won’t do. I sigh. It’s a task for later though. Right now, I have too many other things on my mind.

Looking around, I get a good look at the room. The enemy corpses are strewn across the room, and the rough combat has caused havoc on the furniture. This fight must have made a hell of a lot of noise. The question is: how much?

I quickly order my two Prowlers to keep an eye on the front door. If any passing players or NPCs heard the sounds of combat, I sure as hell want to avoid anyone coming over to investigate, and my Prowlers are perfect for the task of being lookouts. As for the NPCs already inside the building though…

Where are they? This fight lasted for a good while, and it drew in a lot of nearby enemies; but where is the boss? Why didn’t he come rushing into the battle as soon as the first shouts of battle erupted? This tavern is big, but it’s not that big. There is no way the boss didn’t hear the sounds of combat. That is, unless he’s not even here. Is that even possible? It shouldn’t be. I need more information.

I order my Cutthroats to spread out and check the remainder of the rooms. One of them heads back into the kitchen while the other one slips up the stairs. I have the rest of my underlings secure the room and start looting our fallen enemies. I want to proceed with this quest as soon as possible, but I need to give my underlings some time to restore their health points. Completely restoring our health and mana pools would take between ten and fifteen minutes, and I’m not sure if we have time for it. We need more than we have now though, and I’m not going to waste a moment of rest when we get it.

It doesn’t take long for my underlings to pilfer through the pockets of the dead enemies, and I’m soon presented with a delightful pile of equipment that brings a wide smile to my lips.

2x [Heavy Leather Armor Set. Common. +30% Physical Resistance, Per level gain: +1,5 Strength, +1,5 Endurance, +1 Agility, +0,5 Dexterity. Requires: NPC, Fighter Classification.]

[Light Leather Armor Set. Common. +20% Physical Resistance, Per level gain: +1,5 Dexterity +1 Agility, +1 Perception, +0,5 Constitution, +0,5 Strength. Requires: NPC, Ranged Classification.]

[Simple Crossbow. Common. 17-19 Piercing Damage, +2 Dexterity, +1 Perception. Requires: Level 5.]

2x [Worn Iron Shortsword. Common. 13-15 Slashing Damage. +1 Strength, +1 Agility. Requires: Level 5.]

[6 Gold, 7 Silver, 8 Copper.]

This is absolutely perfect! Three sets of armor? That’s exactly what I need! They don’t even have the contraband status on them, meaning I can actually sell them for a decent amount of gold. I even got a fair lump of gold from the encounter. This is why I enjoy killing humanoid enemies. Their loot is always way better than mindless beasts. A pity the humanoid mobs around town is either too low level to effectively grind, or too sparsely populated, or else gaining money and items would have been far easier. This quest is perfect, and I’m sure to massacre any humanoid enemy I come across during this quest if this is the kind of gear they drop.

My evil grin is interrupted by the return of my two Cutthroats. By using our crude hand signal system, the Cutthroat that went upstairs reports of no enemies or loot. A pity. I was hoping for more loot. The Cutthroat that went into the kitchen, however, reports that he found a path forward. Intrigued, I gather my underlings and we move en-masse towards the kitchen. The kitchen is rather small and I find it hard to believe that more than one, maybe two cooks could work simultaneously back here. There are a lot of pans and a nice stove near the western wall, and the smell from whatever stew is brewing is rather pleasant. I don’t see a way forward though.

I glance at the Cutthroat, raising an eyebrow. Meeting my gaze, the Cutthroat takes the lead and walks over to a corner at the back of the room and drops to his knees. There’s a cleverly concealed hatch on the floor. Weird. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t pointed it out. Opening the hatch, I peer into the darkness below. The hatch connects to a small cellar and I can spot the edge of a dark stone corridor leading deeper underground.

Great! So this is why we didn’t attract more enemies. It’s a secret underground lair! I have to admit, that’s pretty darn awesome. I’ve loved this kind of secret lair stuff since I was a child and built pillow forts in the basement with my sister. To see an actual secret underground lair though? Utterly fantastic.

I stop myself from gleefully skipping down the dark corridor for just long enough to send my Cutthroats ahead to scout. I drop into the cellar and start setting up a glue trap at the mouth of the corridor. It doesn’t hurt to put up some safety precautions after all.

The tunnel seems to go on for some distance and it severely lacks proper lighting. My biggest grief about the whole situation is that the corridor is not wide enough to accommodate more than two underlings walking side by side at the same time. That’s not ideal considering the type of underlings I have. I can only hope there are some spacious rooms at the other end.

It takes about two minutes for one of my Cutthroats to reappear. His hand signals indicate that they spotted a few traps along the corridor but no hostiles. They also found a room at the end where my other Cutthroat is keeping watch.

Not bad. This is actually an ideal situation for me. If there are traps ahead, then that means the people at the other end are less vigilant towards a sudden attack, and I also get an opportunity to salvage some exotic trap parts if I’m lucky. I love it when a plan starts to go my way.

I push ahead down the corridor alongside Cobra and the Cutthroat. Cobra for protection and the Cutthroat to point out all the traps. The first trap we come across is a tripwire trap connected to some sort of gizmo that launches a javelin down the hallway. The contraption looks pretty awesome, and I’m devastated when I don’t gain any components after I dismantling it. I really need to look into traps that launch javelins at people later. It must be amazingly powerful.

The second trap we come across is a bit more sophisticated, albeit less flashy than the javelin thrower. It’s a pressure plate trap connected to a series of poison dart launchers hidden behind a gap in the wall. It looks pretty sweet, and I can already imagine all sorts of poisons I could add to a similar trap of my own. I have to check with Odin later to see what types of schematics he has available.

Sadly, neither this trap yields any components for trap making. I can’t wait for my disarming skill to level up some more to increase the drop chance, but it’s not all bad. These are all low-level traps anyway, and I don’t think it will be too hard for me to make some of my own after I get hold of some of the schematics. We soon find ourselves at the end of the corridor that opens up into a large storage room stacked with wooden shelves, crates, and barrels of unknown origin. I can spot a sturdy wooden door at the opposite end of the room with a fancy-looking metal handle. My gamer instincts are screaming that there is trouble beyond that door, and I find myself inclined to agree.

I guess it’s time for me to test out my latest invention. I just need to attract some volunteers.