Boom!

A large explosion blew up dirt from the ground and blasted rocks like shrapnel into the surrounding areas.

[-292]

[-382]

[-315]

Three damage numbers appeared above the head of Gii, Sun, and Queen as they were in the closest proximity to this golem as it smashed its foot down onto the ground. Queen was the first to react as tendrils of shadow whipped out from her arm and began binding the golem so it would not be able to move. Sun began to prepare a buff spell as Gii rushed forward to engage the golem.

Gii dashed in front and was able to avoid the swing of its arm thanks to the restrictions from Queen's skill. He quickly reached its chest and slashed out with reckless abandon

[-832]

He dashed out of the Golems range once again before he was slammed with great force into his back from another one of the Golems

[-382]

As Gii was prepared to whirl around and unleash an attack a flurry of events all happened simultaneously. Sun finished his spell and the divine aura descended on Queen. Her weapon now imbued with a radiant glow, she dashed forward and stabbed towards the head of the golem which had now broken free of her brief restraint.

[-627]

The Golem's head smashed into pieces and she landed gracefully next to the remains as they dissipated. Gii, who had turned his focus to the Golem that had attacked him from behind, watched as Fatal was able to rush up into his Melee range and unleash a devastating slash across its body.

[-1979]

The golem immediately crumbled into gravel after the slash and it began dissipating. Gii then felt a warm wind envelope him as he saw his health start increasing

Critical hit!

[+600]

"Hey, would you look at that, you're the lucky recipient of a critical heal!"

Pixie laughed as he retreated from the group of lesser golems that were heading his way. Fatal stepped in between and fended them off to allow his brother to retreat. Before Fatal could wind up one of his massive swings of the sword, a flash appeared and damage numbers popped up above one of the lesser golems.

Critical hit!

[-567]

Critical Hit

[-472]

Rebel had dashed out and stabbed into the back of the golem with her pair of daggers before quickly retreating out of their range. The lesser golem began to collapse and fell to the ground before disappearing. Very quickly after that, Term dashed out and engaged with 2 of the other lesser golem with vicious slashing techniques.

[-630]

[-810]

Both of the Lesser Golems that he slashed crumbled into dirt and Term slashed out with his swords to remove any debris on them before sheathing his weapons. He looked indifferently at the other member of the group before ignoring them and turning around to look for the loot that had been dropped by the golems.

There was an awkward silence before Sun's voice broke the ice and interjected.

"Man this is kind of boring, I thought this place would be fairly difficult but I guess we are higher level than when we initially fought these Golems. Their high resistance isn't really a problem now. At least the loot looks to be promising."

As he said this he held up an uncut gemstone and a grin spread across his face. He tossed it to the approaching figure of Dan who caught it and stored it away in his inventory.

"You are right, the most tedious part of this place looks to be the maze-like caverns. I hope we are able to get done with this sooner rather than later."

Gii could understand the group's complacency at this point as this was already the third room that they had cleared. Even though the numbers of the golems had gone up, they still were not able to give the group a decent fight, at least one where they would be in dire straits. Gii remembered that the most difficult part of this dungeon would be the upcoming fights near the end where they would contain groups with Greater Golems.

Not only did these golems have double the HP of the regular golems, they also had 50% resistance to incoming non-magical damage. The regular golems would still have 35% resistance, which was nothing to scoff at, but the Greater golems were a real pain to deal with simply because they were so tanky. He also knew that the real challenge would come after that when they were trying to fight the Legendary Golem that was the boss of this dungeon.

Although he would like to reveal the information he knows about the dungeon, he felt that it would arouse suspicion as all of the people here looked to be Beta players like himself and would have some knowledge of the game. While it was plausible that he would know some of the basic information about the dungeon, having detailed knowledge like the exact name and stats of enemies was not something that he should know unless he was one of the developers, at least at the current stage of the game.

In the end he decided to just stay quiet and see how things would play out. At the very least he could just pretend to have a knack for picking up small details, that way they might be a little suspicious but there wouldn't be any reason for them to think too much about it. After the group had taken a small break, they were able to continue in their exploration. They were able to encounter a few more groups of Golems but made short work of them, just like the groups they had already encountered. Gii was enjoying things immensely as he had been able to level up 3 additional times since the start of the dungeon and was only a few levels from being to wear his full set of equipment.

As they were exploring the different avenues, they were notified that Rebel had located a point of interest up ahead of them. The group followed the markings and directions that she had left behind and were able to meet up with her after a short amount of time. Rebel spoke up as she saw the group approaching her.

"I've looked around and there doesn't seem to be any Golems in this area but I definitely think this is the way forward."

Rebel quickly led them through a few more pathways until they came to another large and open cavernous area. Just like Rebel had said, there did not look to be any Golems around this area, but there were some structures that were made out of carved stone. On the opposite side of the room about 50 feet away was a large carved stone door like the one they saw when they entered this dungeon with the key. Unlike the first stone door, there was no visible keyhole on the front or any type of handle that you could use to open the door. Instead what caught the group's attention was stone carvings that were arranged on the floor in front og the door. These carvings actually had 9 squares marked out in a clearly defined 3x3 grid and in the middle of each of the squares was a strange looking rune.

Gii Thought back to his knowledge of this dungeon because he didn't immediately recognize this place at first, but then his fuzzy memory began to clarify and he remembered that there was indeed a puzzle-like room like this. The problem was that he didn't remember the complete solution since it had been so long since he last ran through this dungeon. The key was that there was a specific combination that had to be stood on and the combination would change on each different run through. If there was someone who had a skill that allowed them to read the runes then Gii was confident he could pass this with ease, but he could only remember a couple of the runes that were needed and he couldn't remember the specific order they had to be activated in.

Gii knew what the translated version of the phrase was supposed to say, but that would only be helpful if there was someone who could read the runes of this ancient language. In his past life there were many players that would learn this language to specifically be prepared for situations like this, but at this early stage of the game it was difficult for players to determine what would be useful or not. Gii came back from his thoughts as he re-focused his attention on the conversation of the group.

"This is troublesome, I didn't expect there to be a puzzle like this"

Dan rubbed his chin as he walked around the runes on the floor and examined them. Queens was doing the same while Term seemed disinterested and was inspecting the door itself. Gii decided to follow dan and look things over before asking his question as nonchalantly as possible.

"Does anyone recognize these runes? they could mean something."

Sun and Rebel shook their heads

"I've been stuck in the church raising my reputation and doing quests for them, I haven't had time to invest into learning other languages or anything."

"I was running around for the assassin's guild and trying to level so I haven't either."

As Gii was trying to remember the runes as best he could, Pixie spoke up

"Actually I think I recognize them."

The rest of the group turned to look at Pixie with surprise, Gii included. He simply laughed and explained.

"No need to look at me like that. My race change to a pixie was rather special and I encountered similar runes during that quest. I got a skill that allowed me to infer meaning in ancient texts. I can't read these but I can kind of guess the meaning of each one?"

Dan and the group perked up and Gii felt a wave of relief as he knew that with that much information he might be able to jog his memory and solve this rather quickly. As Pixie looked at everyone's expectant faces he smiled.

"Alright Alright, I get it, Give me a moment to look everything over."

Pixie then went around and carefully studied all of the different runes while muttering under his breath so that he could memorize the different meanings. After about 20 minutes or so, Term let out an impatient grunt as he was standing in boredom at the side of the door. As Dan was looking over at him with a disapproving glare, Pixie finally spoke up and started pointing out the meanings of the different runes.

"This one probably means 'Guardian' and that one I think has something to do with 'Shield' or 'Armor'.."

Pixie methodically explained everything to the group as they listened intently and tried to rack their brains to the solution. Gii took in the information and tried to connect which portions of the runes tied to the translation that he remembered.

The guardian part is definitely the last, I think the mention of swordsmanship should be the first and then second would be....kingdom?

Gii thought about it as much as he could, but since the translation was not complete he could only be about 80% sure of the correct solution. He could easily just start making suggestions, but he would prefer to try and present the information in a more natural way. As he was racking his brain with a way to give the group the answer, he heard Fatal's voice cut into the silence of everyone's thoughts.

"I think I might know the solution?"

Everyone turned to look at him and Fatal somewhat bashfully explained himself.

"So I ended up reading a lot of the books in the library during a quest...a couple of them had this really famous poem and based on the translation of those runes , they kind of reminded me of it."

The group was surprised but then a feeling of joy welled up as Dan spoke out.

"Well it wouldn't hurt to at least try right?"