I wasn’t going to tell Blink, but her human form was mostly worthless to us right now. If she went out in the dungeon as she was, we would die. What was worse was she could only transform once a day, and either direction counted as once a day. The good thing that she had found out before was that the once-a-day was more accurately every 24 hours. But the interface liked to mark it as once a day which was nice and confusing.

That every 24 hours was based on your experience and not the rest of the world. So we only had to wait one day in the safe room before heading out. Which let me get to my gauntlets and drop a core in the poison resistance potion.

I ended up adding to my gauntlets the same runes as I did for my greaves and vambraces. The more strength I had, the harder I hit, and so the less likely I was going to die. I wished that I had some way to link all my equipment after I made it, but it’s what it’s.

With the gauntlets, greaves, and vambraces on, I worked with an effectual strength of 57. Which changed everything. When I was talking to Dave, I got more information from him than he should have given me. I talked to him about how dungeons trained people and thought it was stupid that skill levels didn’t affect damage. He told me that my skill levels just weren’t high enough.

That wasn’t entirely true. My skill levels were high enough as once you reached level 15 on a damage-dealing skill, you started to get a 5% increase to your damage per every 5 levels. Which in and of itself isn’t much. But, at the same time, if your strength is above 20, you also get one-half a point of damage per every two levels. So what happened was the 5% didn’t matter as I was still only doing the weapon damage. However, now that I was above 15 on my short sword and above 20 on my strength because of my equipment, my damage increased to 20-23, plus any magical damage I added.

This was what actually explained why I sailed right through the gremlins just a couple days before. Each hit was more than enough to kill them. Goblins, I might not be able to take out in a single blow, but it would be a near thing if I didn’t. Of course, if they had armor, things changed, but numbers-wise, I shouldn’t have any issues going forward.

I had asked Dave what I needed to do in the dungeon to train up my spells, and he laughed at me. That was one of those times that made me hate how I was built. Of course, magic should train the same as any other skill, but it can only be 1 level higher than your total levels. Which meant that in the grand scheme of things wouldn’t matter. However, to the small schemes of me, it told that I didn’t need to practice how to use them, as they weren’t going anywhere until I learned to read.

Once Blink returned to her hissing self and I got back into my armor, we headed out. But, first, we needed to conquer this dungeon and move it. It was far too cool a thing to not take from here as I was hoping it would give me the options that I needed.

We waved to Dave and stepped out of the safe room. Fortunately, the floor had been cleared less than 5 hours before, so nothing had reset. Happily, the room was the same mess that we had left it. So we headed over to the gate heading down.

“Blink you ready?”

“Readys,” She sent back to me.

I placed the gate token into the gate and watched it slide open. “Let’s do this and be careful this time for traps.”

Once more, the dungeon floor was changing as we moved into it. Where entering the second floor was stairs and a tunnel going down covered in traps; this area was much different. Just looking in, I could see that there was a continuation of the fitted stones. The way forward was simple and straight. It was even well lit, which made me ponder why. Yet even this didn’t slow us as we stepped past the gate.

We stepped past the portcullis it fell back, locking in place. The echo of metal falling into stone holes below it warned those on this floor that we had arrived. I knew we would have a few moments to check the floor for traps before the gremlins and perhaps even the mimic behind us reformed.

It wasn’t the first time that I wished that I had a detect trap skill or, at very least, that the dungeon had changed the color of the stones so that I would know where not to step. But unfortunately, however I looked, I couldn’t see a trap which in and of itself might mean that there was a trap.

Blink and I advanced at an incredible pace. We were about halfway down the hall when the goblins showed up. Ten of what I thought of as the normal goblins. The first ones that I encountered. What made me question them, however, was that, unlike the goblins I had fought before, these were all armed the same, and they came in ranks.

They came around the corner in step and stopped around 10 feet away from me. They were in two ranks of, 5 each of them held a short spear of about 5 feet long. Each goblin had a conical metal helmet and what looked like a leather jacket.

This was the first pressure I felt in this dungeon. The only group I had seen that scared me more since being on this planet were the orcs when they were attacking in mass. These goblins were acting in ways I had never seen.

The front row lowered their spears and took two steps forward. Then the second row took a single step to the right and dropped their tips. Then, as a mass, they took two steps forward and stopped.

I had a few options. The first was that I stayed back and tried to snipe a few with my short bow. If I had picked up the crossbow on the first floor, I would have had plenty of ammo. However, I didn’t, and so I was stuck with having only 5 shots. Of course, if each one hits flawlessly might end up killing 5 of them. But that was perfectly.

The next option I had was to keep slowly moving forward and hope that there were no traps. If I found a trap, then I would need to figure out how to bypass it while a group of goblins was watching. Not that the watching was a problem but rather that they might attack right then.

The third option was to back up and make the goblins come to me. The only issue that I had with that was I only had around twenty feet behind me, and the hall was the perfect size for the goblins to advance. Of course, if I could get the goblins to advance on me, that would show that the floor was clear of traps, and I could fight without worry.

“Ideas?” I sent over to Blink.

“You bait.” She replied back to me as she sent her view from clinging to the side of the wall about five feet in front of me.

I started to back up and pulled an arrow to my bow. If there were traps, they would let me shoot all five; if there weren’t, they would likely charge after the first. But instead, the goblins just stood there in their ranks. They were stomping their feet as I aimed down at the first.

My first arrow was to their center. It struck true, and I saw the goblin freeze up just a bit. Then his knees gave out, and he fell over. I drew out my second as they moved forward another step. This time they yelled a bit with their stomping.

My second arrow clipped another one on the arm which forced it to drop its spear. That one cycled back as another stepped forward. Then the whole group charged.

I backed up quickly as they made their rush. I thought this was going to be it, but they stopped after only about five feet. Then, they started their whole stomping thing again.

For my third and fourth arrows, I shot quickly, getting a kill on the fourth and just grazing the face on the third. When the fourth arrow came out, they rushed again. However, I didn’t move until I saw that they weren’t stopping.

I ran back, trying to get my last arrow in, when I saw behind me what they had been waiting for. They weren’t waiting for me to charge across traps. No, they were waiting for the gremlins to crawl through the portcullis. I was surrounded.

I raised a snap shot at a gremlin by the gate and dropped my bow. Out came my sword as I yelled. “Blink they’re behind us too!”

I knew that with my armor, the gremlins weren’t going to be much problem; after all, there were only about thirty of them. However, I also knew that lucky attacks or even a swarm could take me down if I wasn’t careful.

The rushing goblins, however, were the genuine issue. I heard a shout from them as I turned to face the goblins. They had activated a skill and, as a group, moved forward in a single leap of about five feet. Unfortunately, this rush made the middle two spears slam into me.

Both spears hit my cuirass and glanced off, but it was enough to knock me back and trip me up. Then, as I went into a back roll, I saw the gremlins were all running at me with their crazed little run. They made Gollum look well-fed and sane.

I couldn’t just turn on one of my Death dances because the other group would mess my steps up. I wasn’t at a high enough level to make the change steps to work right, and so that meant I couldn’t dance.

I came back to my feet facing the spear goblins as I saw Blink, or more correctly, her effects as she slammed into the back row of the spear wielders. Her opening blow was from the side, and she plowed down all three who were still standing.

I stepped forward as quickly as I could to bring my sword to bear. But, unfortunately, the front row was whole, and as I stepped in, they shot forward again. This time my left thigh caught a spear across the outside. It had slid right under my skirt and slashed the leg, leaving a four-inch-long furrow.

The pain in my leg brought my body around, which was luck on my side as the gremlin who was jumping at me missed and found the point of a spear. I drove my sword into the goblin who had sliced me. The leather he had on was strong, and so I knew that I was losing damage points as it resisted my blade. So I reached out to him and pulled him the rest of the way onto the sword.

As the other goblins were surrounding me. I pushed my screaming scabbard down and away as I wrenched my sword free of his green body. The blood and gore spilt across my legs and feet as I advanced to the ones on my right.

The goblins were around me, and the gremlins were clinging now. I faced the three that were on my right giving my back to the one on my left. I yelled, “Blink behind me!” As I blocked the tip of a spear with the flat of my sword. It wasn’t a move that I was trying for but rather just what happened as I turned. If I hadn’t, then the spear would have found my femoral, which would have been the end of all for me.

The furrow on my left leg lit up green as my healing from the magic skirt activated. I stepped forward and booted the one who I just blocked in the face. It wasn’t a high kick; after all, they only came up to my hip. He staggered back and blocked the attacks of the two behind him. As that happened, I felt pain across my right ear as a gremlin bit and tore at the flesh.

I brought my left arm across my body and ripped the offending monster off my side, and threw it into the wall. His body was small and weak enough that his head crunched open.

The goblins in front of me recovered fast enough to become a rank of three, and they used their little charge to attack again. It was kind of funny that they chose to be in a row when they used it. Only one was lined up with me, and once again, my cuirass took the blow like the champ that it was.

The goblins on both sides, however, missed me completely. However, they didn’t miss their own gremlins as they each picked up a spear decoration.

Now I am usually a fight what is in front of you type of guy. Yet, this time because they both had their spears down, I went with hacking at the ones on either side of me.

Conical helmets are great in that they do their job of protecting the head. Now, what was funny when your goblin enemies had great helmets and lousy shoulder and neck protection. So when I brought my sword down, it glanced off the helmet but found the neck of the one to my right me. If he hadn’t been forward with the weight of a gremlin holding his spear down, I would likely have glanced back at myself even more.

I drove my right knee up and into the face of the goblin who was in front of me as I turned to hack at the one on my left. As I did, my left foot slipped out from under me, and I fell following my sword. Feeling another weight added to my shoulders.

I saw that the goblin I was aiming for was already dead, and Blink zoomed under my falling body, ripping the throat out of the one I had just kneed. My face fell into the bloody mess of the dead as little claws tried to prick through my coif.