*'Doki'*

Allies and foe alike, both flew from the central mountain of rubble and crashed unceremoniously into the walls. With an unlucky zombie or two punching though them to enjoy a long descent down the tower, all of our group - well, those who were able to - faced the cause with mixed reactions, though, most were awe-struck at the sight.

As the dust settled, three human-sized golems rose from the pile of rubble. They loomed over the remaining goblin-zombies with normal-ish proportions, they had a murky cream tone accompanied by patterns that mimicked the very brickwork of the tower.

Adding to the image, the ground shook, almost unable to take their sheer weight, and it only shook more as they made their move on my group's members. And in seconds, they closed the gap, crushing some of the remaining zombies as they moved to their nearest enemies. All of which turned out to be in the tank groups, fighting off the zombies before facing their new foes.

Though, we didn't have any way of reacting to this new mob-type. Due to this, the party haphazardly gave priority to the golems and split up into the groups from earlier.

With limited magic capabilities, a battle of endurance started. Buying time for the rest of the parties to get in their formation, individuals tried to hold their using any abilities. However, as demonstrated by the lady I was healing, she used her sword to strike it. Surprisingly, it barely left a scratch and for that, she was thrown to the wall with a single punch. Making my job of healing her harder. But, thankfully, another nearby tank got the golem's aggro so it didn't start attacking us.

I personally was reduced to healing for the most part, binding whoever I could to get the health to do so. By the way, I did try to bind the golems, but like the necromancer, they broke free before much damage could be done. I say that, but it was surprisingly still more effective than using swords against it, which lead me to consider doing it regardless.

By the time I began acting upon this, all of the parties had converged, and with minimal conversing, a new plan was set up. The tanking groups distracted the golems by swarming it with all six members and cycling between attacks before ducking out to get healed, which was my group's primary job. Though, personally I was just looking around for the most part. My role was rather dull and all, plus, it gave me a better insight to how the fight was going.

Group four started by targeting the remaining goblins, except for the necromancer who was out of their reach. They slaughtered all but one of them with no trouble, but since the necromancer healed the last one, all of the party had to be present for it to finally die.

And group five focused on the necromancer herself, who was somehow standing at the peak of the mound, even with the golems destroying the most convenient paths to her. Ox had joined them, since rocks would be occasionally thrown at the goblin and rocked the mound - with the rest of the floor - every time. One-third of her health bar vanished almost instantly due to this and without any reaction, only half of it remained minutes later.

But as her health became orange, the golem's attack pattern changed. Becoming more aggressive, all three started to simply walk past the tanking parties and moved to group five. This didn't stop the ghost's stone throwing, but forced group five to flee. Reducing the damage done to the necromancer by half.

In addition, the previously defeated goblin-zombies simply came back up and rejoined the fight. The rats did too, but predictably died as fast as the last time. This resulted in the battle becoming chaotic once more.

The tanking groups dissolved, some chasing the golems and others facing the zombies. All the members of group four joined the latter, with me too focusing on the zombies. I mean, it gave me a reliable amount of health to heal with, and helped those attacking them get stronger attacks off. So bound ten or twenty of them with a few chants and healed five nearby tanks simultaneously.

Group five also separated, individually leading the golems in different directions whilst getting pot-shots at the necromancer whenever they could. It resulted in a bad hit ratio, but made up for lack of damage and lead the golems to change target before they could even land a hit.

Ox, who seemed like she was trying to with her attacks, finally topped the remaining pile of rubble. The necromancer tumbled to the floor, and with the zombie number depleting rapidly, she became the prime target for the nearby swordsman which included LOD.

By now the party had split into two, with most surrounding the necromancer. The rest, like me, helped mop up of zombies. The golems, they fell back and started to fight the former part of the party, which let group five rain damage upon her from afar, pushing the necromancer's health to red.

I personally got bored of my role in the mop up, thus looked around at how the others were doing whilst spamming my bind on anything I could. Thorborg was diligently healing Jeehan and wore a pained expression whilst doing so. To be honest, I should've probably watched over her more than I have, but I just didn't really care to do so during any of the fights before... Her complexion was a bit pale and I definitely saw the sweat starting to build around her forehead, but was still doing her best to hang in there, which I silently commended her for. Titanious was near me, fighting some of the few unbound zombies with a bit of help from two other tanks.

The remaining zombies were taken care of by the time my daze came to an end, therefore, I just watched the spectacle pass from where I stood. In my defense, I couldn't do any real damage to the remaining mobs without being close to them, and with the hoard of my party members around her already, my low damage and resulting low healing force wasn't worth my presence.

It wasn't a long fight from that point anyway. The bundle of swordsman disbanded once the golems arrived, opening the necromancer up for some hard-hitting magic attacks that decimated the nearby vicinity followed up by a hail of arrows, all fired by all the groups archers simultaniously. The hatted-goblin vanished from the site, the golems following her disappearance.

An inevitable sigh of exhaustion erupted from the party, and with no other floors in sight, we all made the random hand movements needed to access our inventories and shared news of our loot.

However, just before we made our reveals, Ox spoke up to the group, "Sorry, can I have a moment?"

She got the attention of all the members, so continued, "The sole reason I'm here is for a certain item that's said to drop here. From those I've asked, it's called the 'Ulgaf's Hoody' or something. It's part of an item group that only work for ghosts, and, since I'm the only ghost here, I'd appreciate if anyone who get's it would trade it with me."

A few murmurs sprang from the group, but they soon died down and we individually announced our loot. It seemed like adventurer etiquette, so we followed suit when out turn came.

Forming a circle, the leader of the samurai girls went first and the order went clockwise from then.

The common items received included: rubble; which was actually a consumable item that contained a random amount of ore or coins, a variety of tattered furniture and banners, a Necronomicon; which was just the name of a series of books, a wizards hat and wizards robes. Incidentally, I got one piece of rubble and two Necronomicon as my loot and most got the same.

For rare drops, Seven people got 'the wand of Ulgaf', three got 'the tower's eye' and both LOD and Thorborg got 'Ulgaf's hoodie', which was genuinely a ghost specific item. But since she didn't need two, she bought the latter's at random in return for an unknown amount of gold. At this point, the other party members, one by one, came up to Thorborg to dump their materials to her as they said they would earlier. And by the sheer amount alone, she made a small smile and a bow to each of them.

With that out of the way, we all headed back down the tower on foot... yeah, I was barely able to feel my legs when we finally escaped. But, for the price of growing twenty-two levels in one dungeon, I was forced to mentally shrug it off.

-

Thankfully now in the carriage, we rode back into town with the same seating arrangement.

Titantious started talking to us, specifically to Thorborg, "So, how was that experience?"

She shrugged with a complicated expression on her face, "Well, it wasn't as bad as I originally thought. I expected there to be a different atmosphere entirely but being in the background of the fights, I didn't get that tone from the rest of you. Well, I say this... I could never be the one actually fighting."

"'A different atmosphere' huh... Could you explain you mean?" Jeehan jumped into the conversation with another question...

Without room to answer, LOD interjected with another, ignoring Jeehan in the process, "Yeah... Anyway, how much did that ghost end up paying you?"

"Um..." Tho tried to speak up but was cut off by one of the other girls in the carriage.

"This girl is the crafter, right? Well, did you get materials you needed? You seemed pretty happy about it," the girl, though probably not by purpose, just added to her confusion.

Seeing the train-wreck of a conversation in front of me, my attention turned to the window near me. The walls of Skimmington were on the horizon, the sky indicating that it was rather late now. Though I was trying my best to ignore it, smatterings of the conversation around me were still loud enough for me to hear.

I then remembered that I had something better to do, sorting my stats out. I also minorly changed my skill list, so they became like this:

Name DokiDoki19 Class Succubus Level 48 Class skills ["Bind" = Mass_Leech.], ["Bolt" = Leech.], ["Heal" = Blood_Transfusion.], [passive = melody_of_screams], [passive = Life_Absorb.], [passive = Attraction_Resistance.], [passive = Attraction_Increase.] Sub-class skills , , , , , , , . Weapon skills ("Have at me" = Power_Charge.), (passive = Staff_Hit.), (passive = Dual_Wield.), (passive = _Magic_Boost.) Additional skills /'Stop' = Skill_Cancellation. Achievement skills N/A Equipment [/td1] On-Hand Steel_Scimitar Off-Hand Bone_Staff Head-wear Cloth_Hood Inner-Wear Black_Boxers Outerwear Healer's_Cape Foor-Wear 100%_Cow_Boots Accessories N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A.

[tr][td4] Stats

Level 48 AP 27000 Defense 58 Damage 183 HP 244/NA Speed 184 Stamina 103 Spare 0

My reason for switching 'Vampiric Bite' with 'Melody of Screams' was because I just didn't use the former at all. The latter was also a passive, and since it sounded like a personal buff, I was interested in using it. What is meant by 'screams' was confusing, but I gathered that would be me getting an enemy to red health or something, so it could be helpful in killing wounded foes.

I also maxed out Leech, so when I looked for new skills, I found a few variants of it that I could choose out of but it would replace Leech if I went for any of them. It felt awkward to just ignore them, but since I'm content with standard Leech, it'll have to wait.

-

After making the finishing choices of my stats, I felt everyone's eyes focus on me. Seems like the conversation from before had changed already...