Kaldalis continued sprinting down the passage that was very much a manmade mining tunnel. The rock was more evenly hewn here, with the walls periodically reinforced with wooden supports. Behind him, Iarsa was yelling something off the script about precious gems. Or precious metals? He wasn’t sure. Her voice was falling into the background, mostly drowned out by Myayuan cursing furiously, Voron cackling in undisguised glee, and a quartet of horned fox-monsters yipping and yowling at his heels.

Despite the mining tunnel looking long-abandoned, Kaldalis could see a few streaks of color in the rock. Veins of lumpy green stone stood out along the walls here and there. He didn’t know what it was or why it had been left behind - some storytelling element that he lacked the geological expertise to understand - but his concerns were ahead. He pushed other concerns out of his mind as he followed the twisting mine tunnels ahead.

After a moment, the tunnels took a sharp zig-zagging turn before opening into a larger chamber. Five more of the little devil foxes were here, and while they were grouped in such a way that they appeared to have been play-fighting recently, the cacophonous din rushing up the tunnel ahead of him meant they were standing at alert, ready to pounce.

Kaldalis was ready to receive them as they came at him. He moved to avoid the snapping jaws as well as he could, making liberal use of his new shield HP. Accepting blows to the shield meant that he could more easily return the attacks with his blade, establishing aggro on each one in turn.

The chamber itself held scattered mining equipment. There was a mine track that ended here with a suspiciously new-looking minecart toppled over next to it. A few picks and buckets were around as well, pitted to uselessness. Hanging from a wooden support beam was a rusty old birdcage, long since empty. The chamber had several exits, but Kaldalis suspected the only way out was going to be to get the minecart back on the track and ride it over some otherwise-impassable chasm. The other passages were all likely dead ends, perhaps with treasure, or perhaps with deadly traps. Behind him, Iarsa was still yelling something about the green stone on the walls, but Kaldalis was well past the mark for that part of the script.

The DPS of his group were right behind him. As soon as Kaldalis stopped running to stand and fight, Myayuan started to energetically hack away at the pack of fox monsters. Voron set about darting pointlessly around the room, launching arrows into the group with similar randomness. Neither had any sense of intentional targeting, and Kaldalis had to try and keep track of what they were hitting to keep ahead of them on aggro. The distraction meant that the swarm of monsters was able to slip an occasional attack in around his defenses. Fortunately, when Jerporbernit rejoined them, they were a little bit more attentive now, throwing healing potions at him on cooldown.

Overall it was an undisciplined display. But they were doing the job, and Kaldalis was making himself into the glue holding it together. Ample use of Shrug Off and Endure complemented his Shield Block, making sure the healing was enough to keep him at a safe HP total.

When Iarsa joined them, she was clutching her side and breathing heavily. Despite the others keeping up pretty well, she obviously was suffering from a stitch in her side, and must have been in worse physical shape than even these low-level adventurers. Between gasps for air, she pretended to be surprised about the presence of more of these fox monsters in here, and warned of a pack leader who might be ruling these abandoned mines now.

For their part, the fox monsters were vicious in combat. Their snapping jaws were quick and merciless, and their bites occasionally inflicted a poison debuff. But their damage was low, and eventually they started to fall. Their deaths identified them as Aquarius Vulpes, which made Kaldalis suspect that they’d been designed explicitly to be marketable, and put in this dungeon to be front-and-center early in the game’s life cycle. There were likely eleven more of them for each of the other astrological signs.

Kaldalis wanted to muse something about the nature of humanity, but he needed to concentrate on avoiding snapping poisoned jaws for a little bit longer before he could afford to be a smartass. He was reasonably sure his party members were NPCs, but if they weren’t, he was positive they would immediately stop helping him if he got his snarky remark out.

As the fight went on, Kaldalis’s Sword and Shield skill reached fifty, and the rate of his skill gain dropped again. He was now receiving 0.2 or 0.3 of a point per strike. But reaching fifty skill unlocked his first offensive ability.

For Sword and Shield, it wasn’t a cooldown. It was a passive skill called Combo. Whenever he struck a foe, they would suffer from an automatic Combo debuff, causing them to take 2% more damage from his subsequent attacks within a few seconds. Subsequent attacks would refresh the duration and add another stack to the debuff, and an enemy could suffer up to ten stacks maximum, causing them to take 20% bonus damage from his attacks.

It suddenly made sense why sword and board DPS had seemed so common among the NPCs. Not only was their mobility option the most flexible defense, but their offensive option was extremely potent when used properly. The only downside was the short duration of the stacks requiring him to focus on a single target.

It felt like Sword and Shield was going to be a good pairing with his primary Spear weapon. Whenever Spear’s Sweeping Strikes was useless due to a lack of secondary targets, Sword and Shield’s Combos were going to be at their absolute best. Of course, it didn’t do very well right now against the trash pack. He kept having to split his damage among the monsters to keep up on aggro as his DPS wildly switched targets with every attack. He never got to benefit from more than two or three stacks at a time.

As the last one fell, Iarsa had mostly caught her breath, and she gave Kaldalis a glare. He could tell she was debating about whether or not she could lose her job for cussing him out. As much as he loved being yelled at, he decided to try and get out in front of it.

“Help me out with this?” he asked, gesturing at the toppled minecart. “I think we probably need this to move forward, right?”

“Why would you think that?” Myayuan asked.

Kaldalis reached out for the cart, touching one of the wheels and spinning it. The wheel smoothly spun without sound or resistance. “The cart’s in great condition. Well-oiled and prepared to run, once we get it back on the track, it will take us out of here.”

“What makes you think that’s the way out, though?” Myayuan pressed. “There’s a bunch of other tunnels here.”

“But only one cart track,” Kaldalis said, pointing up the tunnel with the tracks. “You wouldn’t build a minecart track inside the mine to bring stuff to an interior room to be carried the rest of the way out by hand, would you?”

Iarsa seemed to be mollified by Kaldalis figuring out the way forward. He’d played enough tabletop campaigns that he could imagine she probably spent a lot of time in this room with people ignoring the obvious solution.

“When the mine was at its peak,” Iarsa said as Kaldalis, Voron, and Myayuan hefted the cart up onto the tracks, “these carts would run non-stop, delivering literally tonnes of precious stones to the surface every day. This chamber, though, was the end of those days. The greater deposits had been exhausted, and so the maze of tunnels represented a desperate attempt by the early Baimerians to locate new treasures.”

Kaldalis tuned her out, focusing on the task at hand. Lifting the minecart was pretty easy, but guiding it onto the tracks was a bit of a challenge. There was no way he could grip the cart with enough leverage to lift it without the cart’s bulk blocking his view of the wheels. Voron was a critical help at this juncture. Like Myrin, he was very physically strong for his size, and his lower stature meant that he had the perspective to line it up as the three of them lowered it down.

The cart itself was large enough to fit the five of them more than comfortably. Kaldalis suspected it was sized to accommodate a full group of bhogads, for which it would be a tiny bit cramped, but there was plenty of room for the party as it was. There weren’t exactly seats, but whoever was in charge of this place had welded handles to the inside for them. Once they loaded up, Iarsa gave them a push before jumping in the back.

The cart and track were very well-constructed, and just that little nudge gave them the momentum they needed to get underway. The cart rolled smoothly out of the room, and once it entered the tunnel, things really got going. The tunnel sloped down, and the cart began to pick up speed.

Kaldalis held on tight, squinting into the darkness to prepare for the next threat, but this appeared to be a fully recreational part of the dungeon. Iarsa hooted and hollered into the darkness, subtly encouraging the party to enjoy the ride. Voron was immediately into it, his voice echoing through the tunnels as the cart picked up speed, while Myayuan seemed legitimately frightened, holding tight to the handles and ducking low in the cart. No matter how intense the ride became, Jerporbernit still seemed pretty checked-out. He must have run this dungeon before, possibly dozens of times, if he was this bored with it the whole way.

The ride itself was just shy of wild. There was an early period where the ground dropped away,l and the track was a narrow bridge surrounded on all sides by pure darkness. Presumably something would have prevented them from walking over the track if they hadn’t taken the cart, making it mandatory for the dungeon. Eventually the track started to curve more sharply downwards, right before they re-entered proper stone tunnels again. The cart picked up speed, but the passage went around several banked turns that were tight enough to absorb much of their momentum, so they were never going at a breakneck speed.

The cart was well-maintained, and didn’t shriek, creak, or spark as they went. No matter how fast they went or how sharp the corner, Kaldalis never felt like the group was in real danger. As long as no monsters were going to burst out of nowhere and attack, he could let himself relax and enjoy himself.

It was long long after he relaxed, though, that the track started to straighten out, and there was a shrieking sound of the cart hitting a section of track designed with brakes. The cart slowed down smoothly and steadily, coming to a full and complete stop.

“What a ride!” Iarsa said as she climbed out. “Please watch your step getting out of the cart. Maintain three points of contact for safety, meaning hold with both hands and keep one foot planted on the cart until your other foot touches the ground.”

Despite himself, Kaldalis had to laugh. Even in a dungeon full of murderous beasts, the words of OSHA were impossible to escape.