Walking through the portal they appeared in an open-topped ravine with the sun directly overhead, its heat intensely beating down on them. The stone that made up the ravine was a plain grey with darker veins of grey sporadically running through it. Where they had appeared in the ravine was only about ten feet wide at the narrowest, but Daniel could see that it steadily got a wider farther head until it completely opened up one hundred feet ahead. Turnback he could see the portal they had come from on the wall still open and ready to take them back. “With us being in a ravine I’m worried about ambushes from above in these narrow passages.”

“I agree, but we also don't know what kind of creatures we will be facing yet. I hope it follows a theme like the Solo Dungeon where we will only have the one type of creature to deal with.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agreed, “We should play it slow until we know what we are working with. I take the lead With you behind me and Kota acting as rear guard.” Daniel gestured for Kota to stay back, and he quickly took up position in the back and stayed close to the shadows at the edge of the ravine. Daniel nodded. “Let's go.”

They slowly made their way forward with Daniel in the front, Steve in the middle, and Kota watching their backs. Daniel kept his eyes forward looking for threats while Steve watched for any ambushes from above them. They quickly reached the end of the Ravine and saw that it not only opened up but became a massive circular pit with a path that started from where they stood that gradually spiraled all the way to the bottom. Where they stood they could see humanoid creatures on the bottom with picks working to make the pit deeper. From this distance, Daniel couldn't tell what kind of creatures they were and what they were doing, but they were out of the range of his ‘Identify’ skill. “I guess we should make our way to the bottom then see what we are dealing with.”

Steve nodded and began to make their way down the path keeping their backs to the wall. Daniel kept his eye on the miners and made note of their numbers for future reference. When they had made it about halfway down something strange happened. One of the miners called over another person and Daniel could now see that the miners were humans. The miner pointed at something and several of the other miners approached as Daniel watched on. Together they began to slam their picks down onto something, and that's when all hell broke loose. Rock monsters appeared pulling themselves out of the ground all around the miners. The miners quickly panicked as the monsters began to strike down the miners that got in their way.

Dungeon Quest Protect The Miners: The miners of ash falls gorge have uncovered an ancient source of Earth mana. Defenders spawned from this stone's power have risen up to protect it.

Objective: Defend the miners from the continuous waves of monsters that will appear.

Reward: completion of this dungeon floor, experience, coins, and items based on completion of the dungeon.

Bonus Reward: bonus coins and experience for each miner who lives until the end of all of the encounters.

Daniel read the new quest that appeared in his vision then dismissed it and looked towards Steve, and together they began to sprint down the rest of the way to the bottom of the mine with Kota hot on their heels. Reaching the bottom took another minute, and by then many of the miners already laid motionless on the ground. A few of them on the opposite side away from Daniel and Steve had managed to make a defensive line and were using their picks to keep the rock monster back. Most of the others were just running around in panic and avoiding the creature's onslaught. “Steve, you work on getting the miners over here to defend the ramp they can flee out of the mine if something comes they can't handle. I’ll help the stragglers who are being attacked by the rock monsters. Kota, you stay here and maybe run interference, but I don't know if you can kill any of these things.”

As Daniel sprinted off he could already hear Steve shouting at some of the miners who were running around. Most did not listen at first, but as soon as Steve began to shoot spells and absolutely decimate some of the closest rock monsters many of the miners started to flee on their own to Steve for protection. Daniel stopped focusing on what Steve was doing; he had his own job to do. He headed straight for the group that was making a stand against several of the monsters. They had gained a few more members from the time Daniel had looked away from them, and were doing an okay job at fending for themselves. As Daniel ran he shot an ‘Identify’ at one of the closest monsters.

Tier I Race: Lesser Rock Elemental

Level 2

Tier I Class: Earth Shaper

Highest Attribute: Constitution

It was an elemental which made sense since the quest had said these things were made of mana, and traditionally elementals were amalgamations of mana that took on solid forms. Though they were quite weak in Daniel's opinion though also based on what the quest said they would have to fight waves of these things. Daniel a beeline for the miners and brought down elementals with his maul that got in his way. They were able to survive one of his hammer blows, but he quickly discovers that they seemed to have a weak spot in the center of their chest where light seemed to emanate from. This allowed Daniel to take them out in one swing when striking the location directly. Daniel was just about to reach the miners when one of the four-foot-tall elementals they were fending off got a lucky blow in and one of the miners crumpled to the ground with a blow to his head. Daniel came up behind the elemental that had just landed the blow on the miner and activated ‘Heavy blow’ and cursed to himself internally as he destroyed the elemental. He currently only had the one active skill if he had ever learned ‘Heavy Charge’ for just one skill point he would have had more options to work with and maybe even made it here in time. The elemental collapsed into a pile of rocks revealing the surprised faces of several miners. Daniel knelt down and felt the neck of the miner the elemental had struck, there was still a faint pulse. Daniel quickly removed a health potion from his waist and removed the stopper from the top of the bottle with his teeth and without knowing what to really do just poured it down the man's throat. His breathing quickly stabilized which relieved Daniel as he stood once more “Come on and carry him we have to get you guys to a safer location. I'll clear the path, just stay close behind me and watch mine and each other’s backs.” Daniel began to curse to himself again as he made his way back to Steve in a circuitous route as he killed other elementals, and gathered more miners on the way. From the five including the man, he had fed a health potion he now had a total of eleven miners when he made it back to Steve.

By this point, most of the elementals were mostly all dead and the miners that hadn't been killed by them had all been gathered at the ramp by Steve or were in the group Daniel had saved. Steve made quick work of the last two elementals, and looked to Daniel and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could there was the sound of grinding rocks and more elementals pulled themselves from the ground and began to make their way towards them. They only had a few seconds to act before the next wave was on them, and Daniel decided to act first. "Miners make a defensive wall on the ramp! With your picks you should be able to hold off any who come for you Steve, get behind them, and cast your spells--" Daniel swung his hammer down on the first element to arrive which was at least a foot taller from the ones in the previous wave. They were now standing at maybe five feet tall. His blow knocked it to the ground. "--Kota you continue to run interference, but don't fight any of them!" And just like that people began moving. Many of the miners seemed scared and Daniel was afraid that a few of them would flee up the ramp instead of staying to fight. Hopefully with Steve in the back none would have the nerve to flee past him. Then Daniel had no more time to think as the next wave began their assault in earnest.

The battle was nonstop, and for the first time, Daniel really saw the real power of his troll regeneration feat. This was one of the first times since he got access to the system that an opponent was actually able to hurt him. His armor also didn't help much since the now level 3 lesser elementals used blunt force so his chainmail provided little protection from that type of damage. Throughout the fight he took blows on his arms, legs, chest, really any opening he gave was used to strike at his body, and with their numbers, the amount of superficial damage he was taking quickly added up, but because of this prolonged slog of a battle, he got to see the utility of troll regeneration. Blows he took that would have bruised and taken weeks to heal under normal circumstances took only minutes to heal instead. He also noticed that he wasn't tired at all, another side effect of ‘Troll Regeneration’ keeping him in top fighting condition.

The miners who thankfully did not run away had managed to take down their own fair share of elementals, but they had quickly been exhausted and wounded from the continuous assault forcing them to switch out the front lines in an effort to continue fighting. One of the miner’s only saving graces had been Steve's spells. It turned out that the miners themselves were also quite low-level only level 3 and in their first tier of power. So because of the elementals' exorbitantly high constitution, they weren't able to kill any of them on their own, but with Steve's help, they were able to.

They had worked out a strategy where Steve would use a wind spell to cripple an elemental by cutting off an arm or leg. From there the miners would be able to whale on it with little resistance before it would become a pile of inert rocks and the process would start over again. It worked well for them and together allowed them to keep up with Daniel's own kill count with their numbers.

The fight for Daniel wasn't so easy. He traded blow for blow with the larger elementals. Each hit he took would be healed by Troll Regeneration,’ and each of his blows would cripple or severely injure a target. The fight went on for so long that he was able to one-shot five different elementals with 'Heavy blow' using it every time it came off cooldown. Whenever Daniel killed an elemental he didn't take the healing from ‘Death Blows’ for himself unless he truly needed it instead he funneled all of it to the miners to try and keep them in the fight for as long as possible by mitigating any damage they accumulated. While in the middle of the fight he wasn't able to see who he was funneling the healing to, but instead he also had a sense of all valid targets within an area around him and a sense of how injured they were. He prioritized the ones that had injuries that would keep them from fighting at full effectiveness but ones with broken limbs he passed on for now. He didn't know how much healing it would need to fix their bones so he dared not risk it.

At some point, the tides had turned in their favor and the overwhelming number of foes from before had finally become manageable. Because of that last wave when there were only a few elementals left Daniel asked Kota to have the last elemental chase him, so they could have time to catch their breath and regroup. Daniel surveyed the battlefield and saw piles of large stones littering everywhere they had fought. It was almost eerie in a way as if the piles of stones were markers to note where the dead elementals had fallen. He dismissed the stray thoughts from his head which had become easy ever since he had upgraded 'Powerful Organs' to level 4. Right now however they needed a plan. Daniel doubted that the kiting strategy Kota was doing would work for long. "Gather up the stones from the elementals and pile them up in front of the ramp. We are going to make a makeshift wall to fight behind. With how much stronger this last wave was we won't be able to hold out like we just did again if they continue to get stronger. Prioritize The larger ones we won't have much time until the next wave starts." The miners just stood there looking at him for a moment not moving. "Well are you going to keep looking at me with those blank stairs or are we going to seize fate by the balls and live through this!” That seemed to shock the miners out of their melancholy and the around thirty miners got to work. At least those that weren't too injured did.

Of the around thirty they had saved, about ten of them had some injury that was slowing them down in some way and three were basically completely out of the fight. Surprisingly none of the miners had died from this wave. Of the ones who had gotten injured one had a broken leg, one took a bad blow to the head and was still out cold and probably had a concussion, and the third was the one that Daniel had fed the health potion to. He had also taken a bad head blow and still hadn't woken up even with the healing potion Daniel had fed him. “Steve, feed the ones with broken bones your health potions. Any we can get back into the fight will be a boon for us. I'll do the same.” Daniel found the man with the broken arm and pulled his last health option from his waist. He had one more in his bag, but that was over by Steve and he didn't want to waste any time. The man drank the potion without a word when Daniel handed it to him. What happened next was weird. The arm which had been at a weird angle straightened and set itself on its own. The man screamed out in pain as the arm was put in the proper position. Nothing else that happened was visible on the surface; after a second Daniel poked his arm and the man winced. It still wasn't fully healed, but at least the bone was set so it could begin to heal naturally. That was one of Daniel's concerns with ‘Death Blows’ he didn't know enough about it yet and if he gave healing to a man with a broken bone that wasn't set and made it heal incorrectly would be bad. Daniel clapped the man on the shoulder “Do what you can to help once the fighting starts again I may be able to finish healing that arm for you.”

Leaving the man Daniel began to help the miners move stones to the bottom of the ramp. Building their wall here would make it so they only had one direction to defend and if they got overwhelmed they could retreat further up the ramp and do a fighting retreat. Many of the stones were already basically where they were wanted since that's where the miners had been fighting; they just had to be re-stacked to make a more effective wall they could fight behind. Daniel prioritized moving many of the larger stones since he was able to carry one by himself while the miners would need two or three people to move one. A handful of the miners were taking charge of the actual building of the wall. Surprisingly they were actually shaping the round stones they were carrying over into blocks and stacking them. Daniel carried over another rock and watched the miners work. One of them positioned the rock and once in the right orientation another swung his pick down and with one blow a whole side of the rock sheared off making a flat surface the stone could be laid on for the rest of the side could be squared the elementals were all round the same size so the finished stones were one foot by one-foot cubs which the miners would split in half to make two rectangular prisms instead of a cube. They worked efficiently and Daniel could only assume that they were using some kind of skill to shape the stones.

Whispers entered Daniel's thoughts. The whispers continued for several long seconds and then just as suddenly as they appeared they vanished and Daniel knew. It was a skill from the miner profession called ‘Stone Quarry’ it allowed a user of the skill to shape stones to the desired dimensions in seconds rather than hours of work it would normally take to shape a stone this size without the system. Convenient to say the least, but this was not the first time Daniel had heard the whispers. He assumed they were a part of his ‘Crafting Legacy’ feat and currently anything involving that feat worried him. Dismissing the concern since now was not the time he brought another stone to one of the quarry groups. There were 5 sets of three miners working on shaping the stones. One to position the stone, one to shape it, and one to give the workers a new stone and take the finished stones and add it to the wall. Daniel was amazed at their efficiency; it only took them around twenty seconds to finish each stone and the work quickly added up. They managed to make a four-foot-tall wall in under ten minutes of work. The wall was twenty feet long and two feet thick but there were another seven feet of wall at a right angle to make sure the elementals couldn't just walk around the wall since they were at the bottom of the ramp they also added another two rows of stones to the bottom for them to stand on to give them a little more of a height advantage over their attackers. Daniel just hoped that the over-lapped nature of the wall would be able to stand up against the elements since they didn't have any mortar holding the wall together; it could just be knocked over.

The wall was mostly done when the next wave appeared; they were just adding the last few stones for the defenders to stand on when they appeared. Daniel dropped the stone he was holding and re-summoned Ice Fang to his hand. “Everyone behind the wall and ready yourselves!” Daniel followed him and ran to the unfinished portion of the wall to make sure none of the elementals could get through. “Kota, get back here!” Daniel shouted. Kota came bounding over with the last elemental still following him and in one jump cleared the wall. Daniel dispatched the elemental with a ‘Heavy Blows’ and sent the healing to the man who had the broken arm he had fed the health potion. These Elementals were even larger than the last wave gaining another foot in height bringing them up to six feet tall, and when Daniel used ‘Identity’ he saw they were also one level higher. Though thankfully there seemed to be less of them than the previous waves.

They were thankfully slow and by the time the first hulking elemental made it to the wall ‘Heavy Blows’ cooldown had refreshed. Daniel brought his enhanced blow onto the elemental's head, but for the first time, it did not immediately eliminate the target. He had not aimed for a truly vital spot. Even though it was in a humanoid shape didn't mean its head was vital to its survival.

‘I’ll have to start being more selective with where I aim when using Heavy Blows.’

It was unfortunate, but nothing that could be helped. Steve used a wind spell and the elemental was dealt with. Daniel sent the healing to the same man again and could feel through his skill that he wouldn't need any more healing for the time being. Then the elementals approached the breach in the wall in a wave and Daniel once again had no time to think about anything other than the threats in front of him. Thankfully the elementals did not push over the wall. With their large size and weight, they probably could have just pushed through it, but as it turns out though that they weren't very smart. Once they reached the other parts of the wall they tried to land overhand blows on the defenders who were able to easily move out of the way in time. If Daniel had to guess their highest stats were constitution like ‘Identity’ told him, but probably closely followed by strength with basically no other points in any other stats. They hit hard and could also get hard in return but were slow, clumsy, and dumb. Daniel rained blow after blow onto the elementals without really being able to deal any critical damage to any of them because of their density. He was only able to effectively rain overhanded blows because of the limited space he was working within the breach.

Making his decision Daniel left the safety breach and began to push farther out past the wall which allowed him more freedom of movement and allowed him to face them head-on. He took on three or more at a time similar to the last wave, but he made sure that none of their blows landed on his head and he tried to dodge as many as he could as well. He also tried to be more methodical with his low number of elementals and their even stronger bodies; it was hard to kill them effectively; he had to make every strike as effective as possible. It took several minutes, but after about the fourth elemental he had killed he had worked out an effective method to deal with this new wave. He would dodge any attack that came for him and would strike blows aiming for limbs so that he could hit the more vital locations. Once de-armed he would finish them with a blow to the chest. Whenever ‘Heavy blows’ came off cooldown, if he managed to hit anywhere center mass it would kill the elemental so that's what he tried to do. He managed to slowly grind down. His strategy worked well, and around ten minutes later the wave was all but eliminated. Daniel wanted Kota to try and Kite a single elemental again, but one of the miners was overzealous and struck it down before Daniel was able to say anything.

The next wave immediately spawned, but this one was a lot different than the last. Instead of the around thirty elementals they had just fought, only five spawned scattered around the mining quarry. As soon as they spawned they each picked up a stone from one of the previously killed elementals and as one threw them at their makeshift wall. Each of the head-sized boulders thrown impacted the wall and knocked over sections of it. One landed next to Daniel destroying the wall, and he saw another hit a miner in the chest and saw his chest deform under the blow as he got thrown back. Daniel quickly made an executive decision. “UP THE RAMP NOW!” The miners fled as one tipped over each other and fragmented pieces of the destroyed wall as they fled to higher ground.

Daniel rushed at the nearest elemental to him which was about fifty feet away, but before he was able to make it threw its head-sized stone at him. He was forced to stop and dive to the side to avoid the projectile, and for probably the second time he wished he had taken that charge skill. The other four elementals didn't seem interested in what was going on between Daniel and one of their brothers and seemed content to keep throwing stones at their wall which was quickly crumbling to dust from the assault. Daniel got to his feet and seeing no other option shot the ranged version of Ice Fang's enchantment at the elemental. It didn't even react to the attack and impacted right in the center of its chest. The icicle stuck and immediately exploded. The attack didn't seem to phase the elemental, and it just reached down and picked up another stone. Daniel ran forward again watching carefully so he could dive out of the way of the projectile as soon as it was thrown, but before it was able to, Kota came out of nowhere and full-body tackled the elemental. Unfortunately, Kota didn't manage to knock it over; he also wasn't able to do any damage to it as his claws fruitlessly scraped off of it. The distraction bought Daniel enough time to get into melee range with the elemental. Kota seemed to know when Daniel got to the elemental and jumped off of it, giving him the space to strike at its center of mass. He used ‘Heavy Blows’ and surprisingly the blow completely shattered the elemental making it fall into a pile of stones. Daniel didn't know why it had died in one blow after suffering no other damage but decided not to question it.

Daniel quickly looked around to take stock of the situation, and it was surprisingly good. Steve had retreated up the ramp with the miners and once high enough began to rain spells down onto the other four elementals with little fear of retaliation from them. Because of the distance, he was missing with most of his spells, but he had already taken out one of the other rock throwers and was working on a second. Daniel scoped out the next closest target and with Kota, they began to charge. Like last time as soon as they approached it took aim at them and threw. The throw came at Daniel again, this left Kota free to once again tackle it. Daniel got up and finished his headlong charge at the elemental and once again managed to strike its center mass which staggered the elemental and he quickly brought Ice Fang around for another blow and shattered the elemental. This time even without heavy blows he managed to take it out in only two blows which were a lot less than he was expecting.

‘They probably have a lower constitution. With the size of the stone and the speed at which they are throwing their strength is probably their highest attribute, I’ll have to scan the next one.’

Daniel repeated the same strategy though this time it targeted Kota with its throw this left Daniel free to use ‘Identify’ on it as he continued to run.

Tier I Race: Lesser Rock Elemental

Level 5

Tier I Class: Earth lobber

Highest Attribute: Strength

He was right it had a different class with strength as its highest attribute. Daniel had to focus through the elemental was farther away than the last one, and It managed to throw another stone at Daniel before he managed to reach the elemental. He was forced to roll out of the way allowing Kota to once again tackle the monster and Daniel to finish it off. There was only one left now, and when he turned to look he saw that Steve had already taken care of it. The wave was finished with Daniel and Kota at the far end of the quarry farthest from the ramp. It was then that Daniel got a sense of impending doom as he stood with Kota. “Quickly Kota up the ramp we need to hurry.” they had only made it halfway there before disaster struck. The boss monster had appeared.

It forced itself out of the ground leaving a massive pit where its body had formed just like with the other elementals. The quarry was now filled with craters and stacks of boulders where elementals had died; it almost looked like a war zone. This elemental was no smaller than eighteen feet tall, its entire body made of massive boulders, and was at least half as wide as it was tall. In the center of its chest was some kind of black stone that did not match the grey stone the rest of the quarry was made out of. It had appeared in front of the ramp that led out of the quarry blocking Daniel and Kota from being able to flee in that diction. Daniel stopped his sprint there was no way he could possibly take a blow from this monster and he didn't really want to get into melee with the monster. He watched only to see the boss monster's massive hand meld into the stone and rip out a massive Boulder at least the same size as him from the solid stone floor, and just like that his priorities changed. "Separate Kota." After yelling at Kota he turned and ran straight at the boss.

With the size of the boss and with that show of strength Daniel only hoped that it was just as slow as the other elementals he had faced up to this point. If it wasn't this Boulder would kill him on impact. It was a better option to dodge the bosses' hopefully slow attacks than try and dodge something the same size as him. Daniel managed to make it to the boss before it threw the rock at him, but just because he was no longer a valid target didn't mean there weren't other options. The boss changed its target, raising the boulder higher up, and threw it at the miners that were still making their way farther up the ramp. The rock left the boss's hand moved at ludicrous speeds and made a massive dust cloud and a thunderous noise accompanied the boulder as It impacted the wall. Daniel heard screams and looked up to see two of the miners fall off the walkway and begin to make their deadly descent back to the bottom of the query. Daniel didn't know if there were any other casualties from the impact of the rock itself, but that was unimportant right now he needed to focus.

He focused back on the boss and tried to come up with a plan. He couldn't hit anything vital because of the boss's height even with the extra reach his maul provided, the back stone which was probably his critical spot was a minimum of fifteen feet off the ground, but maybe he could change that. He turned his hammer around and began to smash the spike into the boss's left knee joint like one of the miner’s picks. He did this a total of three times, one of which being a ‘Heavy Blow’ before the boss raised its leg in retaliation and tried to crush him with its oversized foot. Daniel moved out of the way, but the force of the boss's foot impacting the ground made the ground shake enough for him to momentarily lose his balance. Daniel braced his hand on the ground and pushed himself back to his feet to try and continue to slam his maul into the knee joint, but now the boss was focused on him and he had no time to get any blows in as he dodged elemental feet that tried to crush him. If even one of the feet managed to catch him he would surely die.

It was then that Steve began to rain his spells down onto the boss. He used his wind magic as Daniel dodged the attacks of the boss; he could see cuts in the stone that made up its body as the rain of spells continued. Daniel tried to stay behind the boss as much as possible to limit how the boss could attack him since he was far faster than the boss and to also stay out of the way of Steve's spells he didn't want to inadvertently get hit by one of them but with the bosses much larger size Steve didn't have any trouble landing his spells. Because of the constant attempts to crush him with its massive hands and feet. He didn't get an opportunity to attack until the boss suddenly reached its hands through the ground and ripped out another massive boulder. Daniel could see that it was aiming at Steve this time, so with little time to react Daniel rushed forward and brought a hammer strike with another ‘Heavy Blows’ down onto the knee, he had previously attacked as the boss brought its arm forward to throw. The knee gave out under his powerful strike its buckling knee threw off its aim and instead of hitting Steve it instead landed low and hit the path below Steve. Unfortunately, disaster still struck. The path Steve was standing on began to crumble away from the impact and the falling stones took Steve with them as they tumbled to the ground. Daniel wanted to go and help Steve, but with the boss still alive he would have to kill it first.

With the boss down on one knee, Daniel was no longer able to run under its legs but he was able to reach its more vital location to land a more critical strike, specifically the black stone in the center of its chest. However, whenever he got in front of the boss he even though its attacks were slow its fists were still massive and he was unable to close the distance to make a more critical blow. He dodged and watched, trying to figure out its patterns, and made attacks on its arms and uninjured leg when he had an opening. After a minute of this deadly dance, Daniel thought he saw an opening. Its left fist had come slamming down and heavily impacting the ground; this left an opening where he could run underneath its arm in the triangle that formed between its arm and body. Daniel waited for it to make the same attack again and quickly rushed through the gap. In front of him, he could see his goal and he readied his hammer for a decisive blow against the black stone. Then the boss's right fist came in from across its body and right into Daniel's entire upper chest; that's how large its first was.

The head-on blow sent Daniel flying back twenty feet before rolling for another ten. There was no air left in his lungs and he could have sworn he felt many somethings break inside of his body. One of the few things left in his body that hadn't been reinforced by any of his skills was his bones, and he could feel that weakness now as he felt the grinding of broken ribs as he struggled to breathe, but all the pain is what made things worse. The intense pain made him once again retreat inside of that mental tower he made when the pain from the influx of knowledge from his ‘Crafting Legacy’ feat had overwhelmed him. This time however he still had control over his body; it just felt like he was an outside observer unable to feel what was going on outside of his body. He tried to get to his feet, but his body refused to work properly and remained on its back facing the boss. He could faintly feel his ‘Troll Regeneration’ working overtime resetting his bones into place and healing the internal bleeding, but it was just a faint sensation in the back of his mind and the detached part of his mind in his ‘Mental Fortress’ told him that it wouldn't be fast enough. Daniel watched as the boss reached into the ground for the third time and pulled out another hunk of stone to finish him off. He was out of its reach and with its leg crippled this was its only effective way to attack him. This would be the end for Daniel he closed his eyes unwilling to see his death come for him. A second later he heard the sound of the boulder heavily impacting the ground. He was surprised at how little pain there was, but was not surprised since he was still within his ‘Mental Fortress’. The only thing he felt was the distant pain of bones reknitting themselves in his body, but that wasn't right he shouldn't still feel pain if he was dead he snapped his eyes open. The boss laid prone on the ground, a massive rock on its back, and the stone that it was going to throw to finish off Daniel still in its hand un-thrown. Daniel looked up to see where the rock had come from only to see the miners on one of the ledges above cheering and clapping each other on the backs.

It looked like they had broken off an entire section of the solid stone path and sent it hurtling down onto the boss from high above. Daniel sat up since his bones were now in their popper locations. Shakily getting to his feet he was amazed at what the miners had done. The boss didn't move for several long minutes, but soon his joy turned to dread as no messages appeared to tell him that the boss had been defeated. The boss's arms began to slowly move into a push-up-like position and in one motion its body phased through the stone that was on its back as he went back to his kneeling position. The stone fell to the ground and even though the boss didn't truly have a face or any kind of facial features it looked pissed. Daniel made the decision that he was healed enough to fight and began a slow run back towards the boss, agony shooting through his mind with each step which was blocked from reaching his detached mind by his mental defenses. As he got closer he could see millions of hairlines fracture all over the massive earth elemental's entire body. The stone the miners had dropped had not killed the boss, but it looked like its structural integrity was greatly compromised, and this gave Daniel a new plan.

Daniel got the boss who had its back turned to him and was looking upwards to where the stone had come from, and in retaliation pulled a chunk out of the stone that had fallen on it and prepared to throw it back where it had come from, but Daniel had other plans. Before the boss managed to take a chunk out of the stone Daniel arrived behind it and with all his strength and ‘Heavy Blows’ brought his hammer down on its elbow joint. The already weakened arm shattered under his blow and Daniel quickly retreated out of the reach of its remaining arm. He hoped that with one arm broken the boss wouldn't be able to continue throwing the stone. The boss tried to turn around to face its attacker, but Daniel stayed behind. Each second he delayed gave him more time to heal, and time for ‘Heavy Blow’ to come off cooldown. Once ‘Heavy blow’ did come off cooldown Daniel approached again and repeated the process to the other arm. This one didn't break on the first attack, but that was fine all he needed to do was wait. This time instead of trying to turn and face him, it reached to grab another stone to throw, but he took the opportunity to land more blows on the arm. It let go of the rock and tried to swing at him, but he managed to move out of the way in time avoiding the blow. Another minute later he struck the arm again, and this time it did break. He then repeated the process that its last functioning leg and three blows later it too was broken. Daniel had to dodge out of the way as its body fell backward in an attempt to crush him. It was time for the coup de gras. Danik approached the boss and climbed onto his massive chest. He could see the boss flailing its limbs in an attempt to kill him no doubt, but all its limbs were either completely missing or too short to reach him. It was still able to slightly rock its body which messed with his footing a bit, but it was nothing he couldn't overcome. He reached the black stone embedded in its chest, and setting his feet he raised Ice Fang above his head, and for one last time brought it down with all of his strength this time without the aid of his skill. To his surprise the black stone didn't shatter, but instead broke away from the boss's body, and when it did the force animating the boss vanished and it fell into piles of rocks as if it was a puppet with its strings cut. He reached down and pocketed the stone and at the same time he received a flood of healing from ‘Death Blows’ as the boss died. New messages filled his vision, but that could wait and he dismissed them to be read later.

Instead of taking the healing energy for himself, he used the sense the skill gave him to see if he could find Steve he hoped the man was still alive. If he was, he wasn't within his range to feel him. He had never tried to delay the healing before and instead always immediately redirected it to where it was needed. Now however he tried to hold it at arm's length not letting it dissipate like in the past when it wasn't needed but delaying its use. He ran over to the rock pile at the other end of the quarry from where Steve had fallen. As he approached the location he began to strain against the healing energy; it wanted to be used, and he was preventing that purpose. The edge of his range reached the pile of rocks and immediately he felt Kota digging through the rocks, and a second later he felt Steve, Kota had partially unburied him, his head and chest were exposed, but there was a massive stone on Steve’s legs that the dog had not been able to remove. It had probably been around ten minutes since Steve had fallen and based on his limited knowledge of medicine he knew that Steve’s legs had probably been without any or very little blood flow this entire time. He remembered a medical show he had once watched where this guy didn't have any blood circulation in one of his legs, and the doctors feared that removing whatever had been blocking the blood flow without amputating would be a bad idea. Apparently, when you have no blood flow in a part of your body it begins to break down, and when blow flow is reintroduced that stuff that had begun to break down would flood the rest of the body and could cause the heart to stop or other kinds of damage. Daniel didn't know what he should do as he approached, still struggling to keep the healing energy at bay. Was it possible to regrow limbs in this new world? He didn't know. Should he remove Steve's legs, but if he did that he could so easily mess that up. If he cut the major artery in Steve’s leg he could bleed out in seconds and Daniel was no doctor. Daniel made up his mind and just hoped that his skill would be enough. Daniel arrived at Steve and with the help of Kota rolled the boulder off of Steve. Daniel winced fearing that rolling it off would cause more damage and could break bones since it was too big for him to lift off by himself. Daniel directed the healing energy he had been desperately holding off to Steve. Steve began to convulse, and not knowing what else to do held his shoulders down to keep him from injuring himself further. Looking down Daniel noticed Steve's vial sheath on his waist. There was only one blue potion left in it which reminded Daniel. “Kota go grab my bag I’ll stay with Steve!” Kota was faster than he was, he had one healing potion left, and it had to be enough because if it wasn't Steve would die.

Two long minutes later Kota returned with his bag in his mouth. Daniel opened it and removed his last healing potion that was in the protective sheath inside. Opening it up he poured the contents down Steve’s throat. He contemplated trying to carry Steve back through the portal to buy more health potions but feared that if he moved him Daniel could inadvertently make things worse so he sat and waited next to Steve and waited to see what would happen. Daniel was not a religious man, but in that long stretch of time, he prayed for Steve. He didn't pray to any single god from the numerous religions on earth, but he did pray. Daniel didn't know how long he sat next to Steve, but it felt like an age to him. He had run out of things to say and just been repeating things, so to keep his mind off of Steve’s condition he decided to read the prompts he had dismissed; he never knew maybe there was something in there that could further help Steve. He just hoped that he had managed to do enough to save the man. If not Daniel didn't know what he would do next after he left the dungeon.