The potion he had drunk was good, real good, and the fatigue he had been encumbered with, rapidly diminished until it finally reached zero. Now feeling fully refreshed, he climbed up to his feet, looking at the corpses that littered the floor. “Shouldn’t we be worried about the missing goblins showing up ?” His eyes strayed again to the tunnel before them at his own words.

“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling if they were coming, they would already be here by now. I think I will sneak down there and take another look to see what they are up to.” Shan also examined the bodies around them. “From what I can see here, only the sergeant, the conscripts and the guards are missing, they probably stayed back for some reason and are waiting for us.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Garal, his voice high with excitement. “Hey, guess what, I have gained a special bonus combat skill, and it’s as funny as hell.” A giggle escaped his lips, and he wiped away the vomit that had trickled down his chin., his eyes unfocussed as they read something only he could see.

Looking a little annoyed, but also intrigued at the same time, Shan asked the obvious reply. “What is it? ?”

“Here, let me read the announcement I received first, umm…. Congratulations, as you are the first player to become physically sick in Dawnlands, you have been rewarded with the First Vomit Award. As the first person in Dawnlands to perform this action you have been granted a unique skill, the Projectile Vomiting ability…. and it carries on a bit longer. This skill has some nice benefits too, if I can raise its level high enough, but I definitely do not like the way I need to train it.” He shuddered at the thought.

Gordo raised his eyes in surprise, having already being awarded one of these ‘special’ skills himself. “I think it’s a joke skill, something a sick developer came up with to amuse himself. I received one of those already a couple of days ago.”

“You did ?” exclaimed Garal in amazement. “What’s yours ?”

Gordo squirmed in embarrassment. “Its an area of effect skill called Disabling Gas, but I have no intention of training it.”

“Disabling gas ?” then Garal broke into uncontrollable laughter. “You have to be kidding me. You really mean you have a fart skill, don’t you, you got a First Fart Award” his laugh grew even louder as Gordo’s face flushed a bright red.

Shan pushed the two apart. “I don’t know what the fuck you two are going on about, but a little silence here would go a long way to avoiding another goblin rush, don’t you think.” He glared at the pair of them, the look on his face enough to stop the laughter. “If you have finished, loot your corpses and let’s get the final room done.” Quickly they obeyed his commands, and collected their loot.

They advanced carefully to the curve, where Shan eased himself along the wall just far enough to see into the cavern. He delayed there for a few seconds, scanning the open area before returning. “No sign of the sergeant, but the other four are grouped up in the center, waiting for us. If we charge them, we should have enough time to defeat them all before the sergeant shows up.” He waited for Garal and Gordo’s opinion of this, but neither offered any objections. “Well, then, we will charge on three. One….. Two….. THREE.” They all took off in an organized rush.

The battle between the three party members and the four weak goblins that stood against them lasted all of twelve seconds, so badly mismatched were the two groups. As the last body slumped to the ground they gathered together, creating a triangle with their bodies, backs pressed against each other, scanning the room about them for the last goblin, but to no avail, the creature was nowhere in sight. Without any prompting, they looted the bodies before carefully examining the room, looking for anything that would indicate where the sergeant may have gone.

They found the only place which the goblin could have used to leave this space without having to pass them. It was a small door, smallish by human standards, but would be normal size for the diminutive stature that all goblins possessed. A careful check showed it was secured from the inside.

They all agreed that before they would attempt to force the door open, they would spend time searching this cavern looking for anything worth taking. Looking for that Settlement Stone is what they meant, thought Gordo. He followed their actions in stripping anything that could be moved, examining everything closely to see if it gave a description, but it all came to naught, for there was not one single item in the cavern worth looting.

“Shit.” Exclaimed Shan. “The damn stone must be through that door, with the sergeant. Garal, take that door down, use your axe.” Garal nodded, and lifted his axe up. It took him only three blows with his weapon to break whatever mechanism held it shut, the final blow flinging the door open, pivoted on its hinges to smash loudly against the wall inside.

As they entered, they could see the sergeant standing behind a desk in the center of the room, a great hammer raised above its head, repeatedly bringing it down onto a flat stone that sat on the middle of the desks top. Each strike of the hammer to the stone produced a coruscating shower of sparks, bright enough to hurt the eyes of any that looked at them.

Shan, first through the door, shaded his eyes from the blinding display “It’s the damn stone, Garal, stop the goblin before he…” He never got to finish his sentence, as the last blow from the hammer fell and broke the stone. It exploded violently as the imprisoned magic within it escapes, sending stone shards out in all directions, peppering the party and causing multiple injuries. The blast wave of the magic picked them all up and sent them flying backwards, slamming all of them into the wall. Gordo could see his health bar plummet down by at least ninety percent as he slid down the wall, totally stunned.

Laying there, slumped against a wall, he closed his eyes, the only part of him that the stun debuff would allow, and waited, pain wracking his whole body from his impact against the wall. From the sharp pains he was receiving from one of his arms and a leg, he suspected that both were broken. If he got a bleed debuff from this, no miracle would save him this time h realized.

Twenty seconds later, the debuff ran out, but he remained there, waiting for his heath to recover enough that the pain would stop. Groaning, he tried to straighten his leg, but screamed in agony as the sudden surge of pain this produced nearly overwhelmed him. That leg was definitely broken, and from the feel of it, in more than one place. Through the pain he could hear someone calling his name, then a hand grabbed him by one shoulder and shook him. Unfortunately for Gordo, the shoulder was attached to his broken arm, and the movement only escalated the pain he was already experiencing, dragging more screams of agony from his throat. The waves of pain lapped higher and higher until darkness overtook him, bringing relief with it.

He returned to consciousness some time later and feeling little pain, opened his eyes and looked about himself. From what he could see, he hadn’t been moved from the position the blast had placed him in. Shan and Garal were over at the table where the goblin had stood, talking between themselves. The small movement he made in an attempt to sit in a more upright position must have caught their eyes, for they quickly stopped their conversation and made their way over to where he lay.

Squatting down in front of him, Shan looked him in the eyes. “What the hell just happened there, Gordo, you were screaming your head off, like you were in agony ? This is a game, no one get hurt in a game, it’s not possible.”

Groaning slightly, he tested his arm by moving it about, and feeling only a slight twitch, did the same to the injured leg. His movements at first were tentative, but became more vigorous as his confidence in them returned. Looking up at Shan he simply replied. “I can.”

Garal responded first to this remark, and exclaimed “What ?” followed quickly by “How ?” He seemed to be more interested than surprised.

He considered this question, and decided to give as honest an answer as he could, without giving away too much information “I have an experimental pain module installed on my equipment. It lets me feel the pain a character received from injuries, but I think the pain threshold is set too high, it feels like I’m experiencing the full amount.”

“Holy shit, no wonder you were screaming, those injuries you had were brutal, and you were feeling the full experience of pain, as well.” Garal shook his head at the thought. “If I was you, I would switch that damn thing off.”

“Too late for that, its hardwired in. I will just have to work out how to lower the threshold to something a little more tolerable. Anyway, the least said about that the better. Now, where’s that goblin, did you kill it ?”

Garal laughed, and shook his head. When he saw that Gordo was confused by his denial, he just pointed one finger at the wall behind the desk. Looking at it, Gordo couldn’t see anything at all, not even a body. “What ? it’s a wall. What am I supposed to be looking at, the crappy paint job ?”

This just seem to make Garal laugh even louder. “That crappy paint job IS the goblin, or should I say what is left of the goblin.” He couldn’t stop giggling at this, and it didn’t help with Shan just staring at him with a ‘not amused’ expression, for this just made the giggles worse.

“As my rather immature brother said, that is the goblin, he was standing a lot closer to the explosion than we were, so I think the force of it ripped it apart and splattered the remains onto the wall. It’s an amazing sight, for even the bones have been pulverized into the stone. The old saying that you could scrape someone up with a spatula is an actual fact here, that what you would need to remove the remains from the stones, a spatula.” Behind Shan, Garal’s giggles turned into a full out laughing fit, and all Shan could do was roll his eyes in exasperation.

“Come on, Shan, you have to agree that it is amusing, in a twisted way, you can’t blame Garal for finding the amusement in it.” Gordo eased himself up slowly to make sure there was no lingering pockets of pain to assault him unexpectedly.

“That describes my brother perfectly, Gordo… twisted.” He turned around to glare at Garal. “Have you finished now ? Can we continue and finish this debacle, I want to log off and get something to eat.”

The body of the goblin produced a couple of nice items, which made Garal start giggling again, muttering something about physics, but most items were in a broken state, probably determined by the method of death that the goblin experienced, making the search of the remains an unprofitable endeavor. The prize item of the dungeon had been destroyed as well, but a search of the desk produced a couple of unreadable books, a chainmail hood and another little casket, this one already unlocked. Garal, as the fighter, took the hood for himself, So Shan divided the books up between himself and Gordo. After the Autosplit function had worked its magic, Gordo found himself richer when it allocated him three sapphires, two garnets, ten gold, nine silver and seventy copper coins.

With nothing remaining to do in the dungeon, the party made its way back along the tunnels to the entrance cavern, where Shan asked them to hold up for a minute. He looked at both of them, a solemn look on his face. “Before we leave, I want to thank you, Gordo, for joining us on this, well, let’s call it a quest. It’s turned out to be a rather poor dungeon, with pretty low amounts of loot, but at least you would have got a fair bit of experience. It’s a bummer the Settlement Stone was destroyed, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the developers intention, but now it’s gone, the dungeon won’t offer this item to any other players, it was only available to the first party into this dungeon, and we stuffed it up.” Even he shook his head at his own words, still miffed that it had slipped through his fingers. “Anyway, once we leave here, we won’t be able to return, ever, so if you think you need to do something else here before we leave, this is the time to speak up.” He paused here, not expecting any response, then continued. “Once out through the exit, our respawn point will be reset to its last setting,and we will log off. So, are you ready ?”

Both nodded their affirmation on leaving, and the party stepped across the events horizon……