“Thank you,” I acknowledged the healer with deep gratitude. Normally warriors needed to be ferried to the backline to be healed due to the limited range of healer abilities. I was grateful that she risked her life to heal and buff fellow soldiers.

I grabbed her hand, and opened her palm.

Shhk.

Several silver coins fell out of my inventory into her hand.

“Keep up the good work,” I said.

The healer nodded and tucked the cross pendant she used to buff me back in between her chest, then ran off to the next injured soldier.

I took off towards the metal staircase on the far end of the dwarven fortress, as more scalding oil rained down from the heavens above. I ran up the stairs with Meat Shield perched on my back, sporadically roasting the air in the direction of a dwarf. Her flame breath attack did a decent amount of damage, but not nearly enough to kill a dwarf.

In front of me on the stairs was a shield tank, wearing the same iron armor I had on, and a warrior, in a brawl with three dwarves that were visibly inebriated judging by the way they were swaying back and forth while brandishing their maces and warhammers.

With surprising agility, I leapt onto the ledge and ran across the narrow wiring, bypassing the brawl completely as Meat Shield took the opportunity to spit out a drive-by flame breath at a drunk dwarf’s face.

“Nyahaha, this is so fun~” Meat Shield said smugly while clinging onto my back.

Judging by the amount of time between her violent flame spits and the fact that she was clearly itching to do it more, there was definitely a limiter on Meat Shield’s flame breath ability.

I never thought I’d be jealous of a cat, but man did it suck getting [Theft] and [Pickpocket] when even my cat got a damage ability. What the fuck was wrong with my class? Just give me a straightforward damaging ability already! Enough with the ambiguous ability descriptions. Maybe they’d pay off in the future, but I needed power now!

God, this was so frustrating.

I finally managed to make it to the second level. The main tunnel entrance up ahead, a large hollowed out arcin the mountain that was currently a hotbed for combat. To the left of the tunnel was a dwarven canteen and storage unit, and to the right were living quarters. Some combat was happening outside the tunnel, but the main fight was in the entrance, where Commander Isaac and Commander Isabelle were fighting like madmen.

I ran into the tunnel entrance and joined the fray.

Sshhhhhk.

“Wha–?”

A pit trap activated under the feet of several soldiers, and they fell screaming to their deaths into a spike trap, impaled by five foot long narrow metal spikes.

“Be careful of the traps!” Commander Isabelle warned. “Check your feet before you walk, idiots!”

She flipped in the air like a trapeze artist and fanned out throwing knives clutched in her knuckles.

Commander Isaac growled, parrying a blow with his special ornate rapier. “Blasted dwarves must have other tricks up their sleeves. Stay sharp, Isabelle.”

My whip struck a dwarf’s chestplate with a resounding crack as I joined the chaotic melee.

[10 physical damage]

These god damn dwarves were just too fucking tanky. What the hell was I supposed to do? [Heart Ripper] only worked as an execute, and it was much harder to use if they were wearing armor.

“Thunderbolt!”

SLAM.

[You have taken a critical hit.]

[You have been staggered.]

The dwarf’s battleaxe connected directly with my helmet right as the magic circle appeared in front of my hand. These guys were just way too relentless for me to get easy casts off. Before today, I never really understood why mages complained about cast times and interruptions, but now I was fully understanding it.

Not every opponent was just going to let me sit there and cast a full spell. It worked against slower opponents like orcs and shitty low level PKers because of my high dexterity, but against a well rounded, strong opponent like a dwarf that could land good hits, these tactics started to fail.

BAM.

Another direct hit across my face with the battleaxe.

[You have taken a critical hit.]

[You are now disoriented.]

“Master!”

In my hazy, disoriented state, I saw flames erupt from Meat Shield’s mouth towards the dwarf as I fell to the ground. But the ground seemed to be moving?

I blinked, and realized that Giant Books had picked me up. Meat Shield was standing above me with an uncorked [Large Health Potion], which she poured down my throat.

“I owe you one, Books,” I mumbled. I gulped down the red liquid from the potion, gasping for air as it left a bitter velvety aftertaste.

Color flooded back into my face as my health went up, and I sat up and shook my head.

“Be careful next time, man,” Books said in his deep giant voice. “Drink this.”

He summoned another potion, which he handed to Meat Shield. Meat Shield uncorked the unfamiliar bubbling yellow potion and handed it to me to drink.

[You have obtained a Potion of Hill Giant Strength]

Glug, glug.

Your strength has increased by 50.

Your vitality has increased by 50.

Books set me down nearby after making sure I was topped off from [Potioneer]. In the tunnel, traps and gadgets were killing soldiers off left and right, and the heavily armored dwarves were holding their own just fine even though a lot of them were noticeably drunk. For every fallen dwarf, there were at least two or three dead human soldiers.

I unequipped my dented [Iron Full Helmet] and equipped the [Crown of the Forgotten King] before rejoining the fight with renewed vigor. The bulk of our forces were on the second level now, including the healers, but judging by the state of the battle, I needed to fight at full force.

Without caring about who saw, I activated [Dimension Ripper] and headed towards a bloodied unarmored dwarf in combat with Donovan, who had a severe unhealed burn mark on his left forearm and a nasty gash across his chest. The dwarf was gaining the upper hand with his battle axe against Donovan’s unarmed combat style.

Thwack.

[42 damage]

The Potion of Hill Giant Strength gave my love whip lashes an extra kick. So this was what it was like to have non-zero strength...

“Restrain!”

Love whip coiled around the dwarf before it could smash down with its battle axe, but the dwarf was breaking through by the second.

“Hold him down, Donovan.”

Donovan took the opportunity to hip throw the dwarf onto the floor, pinning him down with his bodyweight.

I got closer and shot my palm out, as the magic circle finally completed for once. In fact, didn’t it feel faster than usual?

“Thunderbolt.”

[270 damage]

Tsk. These guys were high level and had great magic resistance, and even a point blank thunderbolt couldn’t insta kill it.

“Heart Ripper.”

My left hand glowed black as I engulfed my hand in the dwarf’s chest and pulled back, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of its chest.

You have slain a dwarf.

You have gained a level.

You have gained silver.

You have gained three souls.

Donovan has received Adamantite Battle Axe.

It gave Donovan the loot this time, which was fair since I came in at the last minute and basically stole his kill. The dwarf wasn’t a boss monster, so the loot did not have the [Contested] status.

Farming souls like this wasn’t bad.

Pant, pant.

Donovan wasn’t in a good state. His health bar was below a tenth and steadily declining, and he had heavy sweat and a feverish disposition.

“Shit. Hang in there, I’ll get you to a healer.”

I splashed a health potion on his wounds, but they weren’t recovering.

“Nggghh,” he groaned in pain, blood pooling out of the gash on his chest as I tried to avoid aggravating the fresh oil burn on his left arm.

At that moment, a dwarf shouted from further down the tunnel.

“Fire in the hole!”

A thick mortar shell flew across the tunnel and hit a side of the tunnel wall.

BOOOOOOOOOOM.

[-154 health.]

[You have been disoriented.]

Eeeeeeeeeeeee–

My ears were ringing like crazy as dust rushed everywhere from the mortar blast.

*Cough* *cough*

I hacked and tried to fan away the dust in front of my face, as my hearing gradually returned and the dust began to settle.

Donovan was lying right in front of me, dead. The blast must have chunked out the remaining bit of health he had left. First Solar, and now Donovan…

Only six from the original eight of my squad were still alive, and if things kept going like this it was only going to get worse.

All four commanders were now running down the tunnel at top speed with more than half of their officers following suit. I saw Joran, Isaac’s right hand man and ranger, following Isaac with his bow notched at the ready.

They were heading for the mortar, before it could deal any more damage. But the sudden loss of so much combat power near the flank was devastating. Each officer had the combat power of multiple regular soldiers, and the commanders were in a realm of their own. We needed them to hold on against the dwarves.

I turned around and spotted the female cleric with the cross pendant that healed me earlier. She was sitting on the ground on her knees, dazed from the explosion. I ran over to her and shouted.

“We have to follow the commanders. This part of the tunnel isn’t safe as long as that mortar is still up!”

I extended a hand to her and pulled her up, as she stood on wobbly legs.

“Can you run?”

“Yeah,” she responded, regaining her senses.

“Let’s go.”

A second mortar blast soared across and hit the opposite wall from us, as the entire tunnel shuddered from the impact. I started to run, and soldiers all around us began disengaging from their dwarven opponents and sprinting down the tunnel. It was clear as day that as long as the mortar fire didn’t stop, we were all going to die.

Bodies of soldiers and dwarves lay all over the place as I ran down the tunnel, my hand grasping love whip as the whip pulled me forward even faster until I was almost flying down the tunnel.

What if I actually tried flying with the whip?

I flicked my wrist and commanded the whip to bring me into the air. The whip yanked me up so hard I almost dislocated my shoulder. I cancelled the order immediately and just commanded it to help me run faster, since I didn’t have good enough control to safely use it as a flight mechanism.

Suddenly, I felt really bad for [Eric], who must have felt unearthly pain when love whip yanked him across the air into the temple at Mountain.

Nevertheless, I was accelerating faster than a lot of the soldiers and dwarves beside me, and avoiding multiple traps that couldn’t trigger fast enough to snag me.

“I feel car sick~” Meat Shield chimed, still perched on my back as we flew through the bloody chaos.

I could see the mortar now. There were actually two–giant metal contraptions filled with whistling interconnected metal parts and screws to hold the whole thing together. At the bottom of each mortar was a massive mechanical bellow and forge, which served the dual purpose of being a smithery as well as a fuel source for the explosive power of the mortars.

Standing near the forge were two named dwarves. [Halfdan Ragnarsson] was operating the mechanical bellow, and had massive biceps and a big belly.

To the right and currently engaged in combat with all four commanders was [Olof the Brash], a dwarf in regal golden-red armor wielding a golden half crescent poleaxe. Olof the Brash’s name was highlighted in black.

This was the first time I’d ever seen a name highlighted in black. The dwarf effortlessly beat back Commander Isabelle’s assassination ability and parried Commander Isaac’s rapier. The first regiment commander, a berserker type warrior, was slashed in the arm by a powerful sweep from the golden half crescent poleaxe.

The second regiment commander, a druid, transformed into a bear and lunged at the golden armor clad dwarf, who responded with an uppercut to the stomach that sent the bear sprawling.

“Did I not give you fair warning last time?” Olof the Brash thundered. “Come back here again and I’ll gut every last one of you!”