After leaving all the extra equipment and supplies on the table in our safe room we go back to the guard room. Tom listened at the door and inspected it before we proceed. Frank opened the door, followed by me, Justin, Nora, and Tom. The door opened into a wide corridor lined with doors. The walls where made of cut granite with an arched stone ceiling that vaulted fifteen feet overhead. After we all enter the corridor Tom moved up to check the first door. We go through ten rooms in all. Each is setup the same way with a small bed, dresser, writing desk, magic lamp embedded in the wall, and a single chair, but no occupants.

At the end of the hall we have a choice when the corridor branches to the right and left. The left-hand branch leads to a door while the right continues for fifty feet before taking a sharp right. Tom enters stealth and looks around the bend which leads to a set of stairs going down. We decide to check out the door before taking the stairs. The door is of thick oak with bands of steel. It has no lock but doesn’t move when we try to open it even with Frank and I both straining to open it.

After discussing it I try to open it with a creative use of shaping. I first raise a shield and ask everyone to stand behind me. I pull ten water skins from my inventory and pour the water on the floor in front of the door. I then shape the water, which flows to the door. Since it is wood, I can force the water into the pores. It takes about fifteen minutes to finish and about half of my mana. The entire time the door is creaking and popping. I then use a fire shaping to pull the heat from the water into the stone floor. The door practically explodes into fragments as it freezes and the water expands. It nearly takes down my shield. We enter what appears to be a store room for weapons while Tom checks over the door. There is an excellent selection of swords, daggers, spears, maces, bows, and crossbows. Also, several hundred bolts and arrows. They are all non-magical, but of Uncommon quality. We fill our inventories as you can never have enough weapons.

Tom explains that the door had an internal locking mechanism, which probably could only be opened with some form of magic. After collecting everything not nailed down, we take the other branch of the corridor to the stairs. The stairs ended in a platform about ten feet on a side with a waist high stone wall straight ahead before turning down a corridor to the left. Tom has the highest skill with stealth so he cautiously peeks over the stone railing. We can hear the sound of drums and chanting from down the stairs.

Tom: There is a huge open room about 200 feet across with a large ritual diagram in the center surrounding a raised dais. The Dais has a huge being covered in green flames kneeling and I think chanting, but I can’t make anything out from here. The room has 180 guards grouped in concentric rings outside of the diagram, which is probably why this floor is so empty. Also, probably why no one came when the door exploded.

George: Well this is good and bad, this means the floors are probably lightly defended, but the downside is that when we get to the bottom level there are too many for us to handle.

While we are discussing what we found a new notification pops up.

Quest: Stop Lord Toroth

Lord Toroth is trying to open a gateway to return the Elder Gods. These are being of great power that roamed the universe long ago. The Gods and System sealed them away and a new war will start if the Elder Gods are freed.

Reward: Increase your three most advanced skills by one tier level or increase your most advanced skill by two levels. One rare item.

We decide to continue down the stairs, ducking when we approach the overlook for the large chamber. The stairwell descends to an archway leading to a long open room. There is a large set of doors at the far end of the 100-foot-long room, which is thirty feet wide and fifteen feet tall. There are fluted columns running down both sides of the room supporting the ceiling. Tom enters stealth and makes his way along the left wall. About half way down he seems to trip and suddenly two figures detach themselves from the shadows thrown by the columns raising daggers as they rushed Tom.

I make a split decision and shadow step three times. Then I grab Tom and shadow step back to the archway we entered. Tom has a long dart protruding from his side. He gets Frank’s help pulling it out while Justin casts a healing spell. Tom was poisoned, which Justin has a potion for. Nora and I face the room, which has several figures moving rapidly from shadow to shadow. This makes them hard to count. I think they heard the door break upstairs and just set an ambush for us. I cast Concealing Mists while telling the others to get back further from the entrance. Frank surprises me by jumping up onto the ceiling, doing a flip in midair. I enter the mists to get a sneak attack bonus. Two figures enter right away, running through the mists. I hit the one on the right with Fire bullets getting a critical hit, which drops him with a thud to the floor as three more enter the mists. I jump to the side barely avoiding the wall. Then I fire another set of fire bullet into the closest guard, who takes serious damage, but it still standing. He turns in my general direction gesturing and a whip of fire slashes out hitting me in the chest. It shatters my shield spell, but my armor absorbs the remaining damage as he pulls the whip back for another slash. I hit him with fire darts this time, which finishes him off extinguishing his fire whip.

A new group of five enter the mists and I use Air Shaping to summon a low wall of air, which catches four of them across their knees. I gesture at the floor using Earth Shaping and cause the ground to soften allowing them to sink into the floor. I catch three before they manage to get to their feet partially binding them to the floor. The other two are running out of the mists as I hit one in the back with fire bullets causing him to stumble. Another three enter the mists and all hit the wall and fall on the three already stuck in the stone floor. Several of them strike out at each other before realizing they are guards. I hit them all with two ice storm spells before the new group manages to get to their feet. I pick ice storm because it will not burn away the mists like a fireball will and it’s an area affect spell.

I see what appears to be the last group of two more running toward the mists. I use Air Shaping to make a wall of air parallel to the floor at neck height. Both run into it, which takes them across their throats. It doesn’t decapitate them like a horror movie, but I can tell it hurt. I turn and use most of my remaining mana to hit one of the two with a fire bullet spell killing him. I run toward the other and get in a solid hit with my sword as the mist starts to dissipate. From that point it takes a dozen blows to kill him and I took three good hits to my body, which takes me down to 75% of my health. I turn to find my party members finishing the three stuck in the stone. We are all injured, through Justin is healing everyone.

We quickly gather up gear and items from the fallen guards. Then we run back to the safe area and drop everything off. Two of the guards had better armor, which we give to Frank and Justin. Frank because he is our tank and Justin because he is our healer. Everyone is happy with how we handled ourselves in the fight and Tom personally thanks me for getting him out when he was hit. With that many guards they probably would have killed him. We rest in the safe area just long enough to regenerate our mana and stamina and then jog back to the long room. Tom takes the lead again, but this time we all enter and follow the right-hand wall. Tom find three traps like the one that hit him. We make it to the door, which opens easily. It leads down a short corridor to a wall that branches to the right and left into barrack rooms, while continuing to a left-handed bend in the corridor.

We check each of the barracks, but decide to not search the rooms. We can’t afford the time to run loot back up to the safe room or spend the time to search the room. We are all concerned that more guards could be sent at any moment. I find out from Nora that Frank was amazing. He would run along the walls and ceiling stabbing the guards with his spear and the jump to another wall to engage another guard from behind when Tom and Nora were having trouble handling a guard. We continue down the corridor, which branches every fifty feet into another pair of barracks. Finally, we make it to a final set of doors that we can hear chanting through. This must be the set of doors we saw entering the main chamber.

Tom: This is it. I am guessing that the guards chanting are not going to be able to stop or the spell will be disrupted. It will then either need to be started from scratch or backlash on the guards. Even with that, there are twenty guards watching that can attack us not including Lord Toth who was watching the spell formation. We don’t have any way to kill twenty guards in the open chamber. Even if we lead them into the corridor, we will be so badly injured and drained of mana that they can finish us off.

We all look at each other trying to think of what to do, when I have an idea. I quickly tell the others and they all look at me like I am crazy, but they can’t think of anything better. We run back to the barracks to gather supplies. After working on my plan for several hours while the others gathered materials, we were ready. I am mentally tired and decide to drink an Iron Will potion to make sure I am alert for the battle to come. We make it to the door again. After we all check to make sure everyone is ready, we throw the door open with enough force that it slams into the wall.

All the free guards immediately focus on us as we enter and spread out in front of the door. Lord Toth looks us over and snorts before turning back to the spell formation. He is obviously not impressed. As the guards charge us, we use the surprise I prepared for them. I have spent the last few hours casting fire wards on helmets we collected from the barracks. Originally, I thought to use arrows, but the fire ward I could put on the arrow only did a dozen points of damage. The larger helmets have enough surface area to do 200 points of damage and the I became skilled enough to cause splash damage on the last eight I made. We throw the ones with splash damage first into the groups of guards that charge us. We have thirty helmets and manage to hurl twenty of them before the first guard reaches us, but that is enough. Half the guards are dead before they get to us and most of the others are injured.

We are spread out and I case concealing mists to the right of us and enter the mist to deal with a clump of three guards while Frank jumps over the guards to land behind them. Everyone closes their eyes as Justin sets off a flare to blind them for a few seconds, which allows us to get in several important blows to finish off four guards quickly. The six remaining are quickly dealt with two of them dying in the mists and the other four are killed while we only take some minor injuries. Justin and I drink mana potions, but our mana pools are almost full and everyone else downs a stamina potion, but with the short fight they are nearly full as well.

Lord Toth yells. “Fools you have just earned yourselves a final death.” He pulls a huge axe from his inventory and rushes us before we can regroup from our fight with the guards. Frank jumps and uses an advanced skill that blocks any single attack. Toth strikes his spear with such force that the spear bends and creaks. I thought for sure it would break, but Frank shifts around the blow deflecting it to the side. I start spamming fire bullets, which do about 100 hit points of damage, which isn’t great, but Toth has great armor and good resistances.

Justin hits Toth with a light lance, which is the one combat spell he will use saving the remainder of his mana for healing. Justin signals Toth has no vulnerability to light-based spells. If he did, we would of switch Justin to attack and me to healing. Nora pulls a bow from her inventory and begins to shot fire warded arrows, which are largely absorbed by Toth’s armor, but it is doing more damage than anything else she can do. Tom starts with a song on his lute that boosts our constitution by ten percent. Then he switches to a song that boosts our movement speed by ten percent.

Toth begins to glow and starts to shout when Tom uses his ability to silence him causing the glow to fade. Toth’s face twists in anger as he swipes at Frank several time, which lines him up with Tom, who plays a sharp cord on his lute that sends a sonic attack that ripples the air. Toth is stunned for a few seconds, which gives Frank his first chance to make one of his attacks sink home deep in Toth’s chest. Before Frank can withdraw his spear Toth grabs it with one hand and backhand Frank with his axe sending him flying with twenty-five percent of his health remaining. Toth then pulls the spear out and snaps it over his knee. I wince, that was a rare weapon Frank got from a dungeon boss drop, so it’s loss will really hurt.

I hit Toth with more fire bullets bringing him down to sixty percent health. This also gaining his focus. I wait until he is almost on me to shadow step to the right and fire another fire bullet. I get off another before he can turn and charge me again. This pattern repeats for another five casts, which has nearly exhausted my mana pool. I drank a mana potion to give me a final shadow step after my next fire bullet. I see Frank is back on his feet, healed up by Justin and wielding a new spear. He signals me and I cast a shield and prepare to try to parry with my sword. I should be able to survive one blow, I hope. Toth is down to thirty percent health. Toth charges me, but this time I will not shadow step. I accept Toth’s blow on my sword and fail to parry. The blow knocks me flat and Toth pulls back to hit me two handed with his axe. This puts him in the perfect position for Tom to stun him with another sonic attack that is boosted by his skill Song Strike. Frank is already in the air, fifty feet up. Wow what a jump. He activates three skills in sequence, Falling Arrow, Nightmare Drop, and Thunderous Fall. This entire body is enveloped in gold and blue bands of light, which curl up around his spear before he plunges into Lord Toth.

There is a flash as Frank strikes and I see Frank slide twenty feet over the floor. Frank’s spear however is lodged in Toth’s upper back with one-foot protruding from his cheat bisecting his heart. Toth staggers and spits up a mouth full of blood before collapsing. We all receive a notification we hoped for.

Congratulations

You have completed the quest Stop Lord Toroth.

You have one week to select to increase your three most advanced skills by one tier level or increase your most advanced skill by two levels. Loot Lord Toth’s body to received your rare item.

As much as we would like to relax, we quickly loot lord Toth’s body and prepare to run as the spell formation starts to fade and collapse. The 200 guards begin to stir around the dais. The guards stagger to their feet and we cautiously move back to the door. I am planning on stone shaping the floor around the door to create a lip that will prevent it from opening after we close it. I should have enough mana for that. The guards are muttering and talking to one another in low voices when two of them leave the scattered groups and walk over to us without drawing weapons.

Both bow to us and say. “Thank you all. Lord Toth enslaved our people to be his guards and servants. In our world he in a criminal and we find his punishment just. The System has notified us that we will be transported back to our world. We can offer you a choice to come with us if you wish. You will find our people grateful and our world full of adventure and opportunities for great growth.”

We talk among ourselves in party chat, but no one wants to abandon family and friends on this world. Also, I want to complete the quest to free Poth for Vera. We politely turn down their offer. They nod acceptance as a glowing blue portal opens and the guards begin to walk through. We watch until the last of them go through and then turn to each other when a new notification appears.

Warning

With the completion of this dungeon your party will be ejected in three hours. This is cause damage because of the forceful ejection. Please leave before this time.

“Are you all thinking what I am thinking?” I ask.

“You mean strip the place bare?” Tom says.

Nora giggles and the others are all smiling.

We spend the next three hours going over a set of rooms on the far side of the large spell chamber, which must have been Lord Toth’s suite. We find over 1000 gold, several mana and stamina potions of medium strength, and some nice decorations that were not too bulky that should sell well. We head back up to the safe room, which now has an exit doorway and pack our inventories with everything we can carry. After we have everything, we exit the dungeon and the ripple in the air marking the entrance fades away. All together that was worthwhile. Together we make our way back to the camp, where we sneak back to our bedrolls leaving everyone in the party so we can discuss things in the morning. We have earned some sleep tonight.

Before falling asleep I look at the two items I got from Lord Toth’s body. One is a stone that can increase my skills, which is soul bound and will disappear if not used in one week. The rare item is a soul bound sword. The sword is level restricted to level twenty, so I can’t use it yet. I am very excited as I check out its special ability, which allows it to absorb XP and increase my Parry skill.