Chapter 45 - The dive continues

Day 59

Mike's POV:

"Ok, so the 6th floor is a goblin fortress. There are a lot of rooms populated by large groups of green and blue goblins. Be careful, from what the exploration team told me, this is the first floor with traps."

"Probably traps made by goblins, how dangerous can they be." Hans sneered.

"Shut up Hans and stay focused!" Scorpion angrily responded.

They entered the 6th floor and arrived in a small room with three doors. They all looked the same, and Hans just opened one. There was an around three meter long hallway ending at another door.

"Wait, let me go first and check for traps." Scorpion suggested.

He went into the hallway and it didn't take him long to find a trigger for a trap. He moved a few steps back and threw a rock at it. A metal spike shot out of the wall on the left side of the trap. When they checked it, they saw it had barbed hooks on its tip.

"Probably won't kill you, but it will hurt like hell to remove it." Izzy commented.

"Ok the hallway is cleared. Who is going to open the door?" Scorpion asked.

"Let me do it, I'm the strongest here!" Hans answered and moved to the door.

For a moment, Mike thought it was weird. Why wouldn't the rest of the group insist on letting a tank go first, but then maybe they wanted to see Hans get hurt, too.

Hans opened the door and was greeted by ten green goblins and two arrows flying in his direction. They hit, but didn't manage to punch through his orichalcum chest plate.

"Flamesword!" he shouted and beheaded the first goblin.

The others hurried up and entered the room behind him. The weak green goblins weren't real opponents for them. They were only in the G ranks and even Izzy was physically stronger than them.

"Pretty weak, but if they get lucky and an arrow hits you in the wrong spot, it still kills you." Scorpion determined.

"How about the person opening the door ducking and our casters shooting some AoE spells into the room?"

"Good idea, let's do it this way."Scorpion commented.

"Pah, we don't need a plan against weaklings like that." Hans proudly proclaimed.

"Maybe, but we don't know what is behind the door before we open it, so we should play it safe." Keldian decided.

With everyone agreeing, even Hans had to accept this procedure. They checked the room, gathered the few coins that were dropped by the goblins and opened the other door in it. It led to another hallway with the same look as the one before. Scorpion even found a trap at the same place. They cleared it and Karn went to the door, while Keldian got ready to shoot a fireball.

Karn opened the door, and let himself fall to the ground, dodging the arrows that were shot at him. The fireball hit and the confined space made it a lot more devastating than normal. Five of the blue goblins went down from its explosion and the other seven suffered some burns. They went into a frenzy from the pain and attacked.

These goblins were a lot stronger than their green cousins, but they stood no chance against Karn's, Mike's and Hans' mana reinforced blows. Mike suffered a few smaller cuts, but he was able to heal himself with his Water Regeneration after the fight.

They spent another hour on the floor, clearing up five more rooms, before they found a downwards tunnel to the next floor.

"Shall we keep going or should we call it a day?" Keldian asked his teammates.

"We didn't even get into a real fight, yet. Of course we should keep going." Hans impatiently interjected.

"Yeah, Hans is right. We are a medium leveled E rank group, our opponents were mostly for F rank groups, so I think we should keep going." Scorpion decided.

The others nodded and they kept going to the 7th floor.

"Ok, Sardian warned me about this floor. There is a big room and a lot small rooms connected to it. When they smashed in the door from one of these small rooms, the goblins from all of the others heard the noise and came out of their rooms and attacked. There should be around two hundred blue and black goblins, so we have no way to beat them all at the same time. Maybe, we should sneak past them and go directly to the boss room?"

"What is the boss?" Scorpion asked.

"Oh, yes I forgot to tell. It's a black elite goblin and four mountain lions."

"I don't know, if our fight is too loud, we could be swarmed by the other goblins while we're fighting the boss."Keldian commented while twitching his beard.

"I have an idea! I can use my frost magic to freeze the doors with an ice layer. It should block the doors and dampen the noise at the same time." Izzy suggested.

"Good idea, I like it. We should start on one side and keep the next doors frozen while we work our self from room to room. How many doors can you freeze and how long will the ice hold?" Scorpion asked

"I should be able to freeze around ten and it should hold for an hour. But I'll be out of mana and can't help you with the fight." Izzy answered.

"Enough talk, let's go! It's getting boring." Hans requested.

They moved on and arrived in a very large cave with a lot of boars in it.

"These boars are pretty new, but the exploration group said that they don't attack."

"Good, it would suck to fight against hundreds of angry boars. Ok Izzy, your turn. Please start with the second door from the left and freeze as much as you can. I'll accompany you to cover your escape if anything goes wrong." Scorpion commented.

They moved to the first door and started their work. Ten minutes later, Izzy was finished and they come back. She looked very pale and was out of breath.

"Let's go, tanks in front, I'll open the door. Keldian, please shoot a fireball into the room as the initial salve." Scorpion said.

Mike and Karn positioned themselves in front of the door. Hans was standing on one side and Scorpion on the other. He threw one last look at Keldian and then opened the door. Mike put the shield in front of him, activated Tough Body and stormed forward. The fireball flew over his head and he could feel the heat of its explosion in his face. They caught the goblins by surprise and most of them didn't even have their weapons ready when Mike killed his first opponent.

A quick look showed him that there were four blue and two black goblins still standing. He switched to Haste and stayed close to Karn to give each other cover when he attacked his next foe. This time it was a black goblin which managed to block his sword slash, Mike countered quickly and bashed his shield into the goblins face. When he wanted to finish the stunned goblin, he saw a blue goblin swinging his sword at him. Mike reacted instinctively and switched to Tough Body, the attack wasn't strong so he let himself behit and finished off the stunned goblin with stabbing his sword in its eye. The blue goblin's attack barely managed to wound him, his leather armor and the Tough Body prevented most of the damage. Mike put his shield between him and the foe, took one step and gave the small goblin a strong push. This surprised it and the goblin fell to the floor, where Scorpion planted his short sword into its head.

Mike took a deep breath and looked around. All of the foes were down and his comrades didn't seem to be injured. He activated Water Regeneration and healed the small wound on his side. When he was finished a few moments later, Scorpion and Hans were already searching the room for loot.

"Damn, they have good steel gear, but it's too small for humans." Scorpion commented.

"Good, I wouldn't want to carry all these steel armors out of the dungeon anyway. Look what I've found, 50 silver. There are 20 of these small rooms, ten gold would be a pretty good catch for this floor. Let's keep going."

The money seemed to motivate Hans and he didn't cause any troubles in the fight. Mike was a little bit surprised about Hans non annoying behavior for a moment.

"Izzy, I hope you can cancel your stupid ice spell door by door, otherwise this will take forever."

"Yes Hans, I can do that." Izzy answered.

That's more like it, Mike thought. He didn't know how he would react anyway, if Hans suddenly became a normal person.

"Good, let's go to the next one. I think, we can clear five rooms, before we have to start to freeze more doors." Scorpion suggested.

They used the same plan to clear the next room. This time Mike only needed to fight three blue goblins and wasn't injured, while Karn took some hits. However, his good quality steel armor showed its value and he did only suffer some small bruises.

It was at the forth room, when they ran into the first trouble. The goblins were positioned closer to the door and the fireball didn't do much damage. Mike saw himself against two blue and a black goblin at the same time, each of them equipped with an axe. He used Haste to evade two of the attacks and blocked the one from the black goblin. Then, he switched to Tough Body and ran with the shield in front of him into the goblin. The impact of his larger body mass showed results and the goblin flew three meters through the room, hitting the wall. Mike suffered a heavy blow onto his hips from one of the other foes, switched to Windseeker and cleaved the goblin in two with a sweeping blow. The wound on his hip was forcing him to limp and he was barely able to manage to step out of the way from the attack of his last foe while using Haste.

He got himself back in position, blocked the next attack from the blue goblin with his shield and then stabbed him in the chest. When the foe slumped to the ground, he looked in the direction of his first foe, only to see that it was unconscious and Scorpion was on his way to finish it.

"Damn, I really need a real armor." Mike cursed while using Water Regeneration to heal his wound.

This time it took a lot more time and mana to heal, but he was able to finish it in two minutes.

"Found anything interesting?"He asked

"You could say so. Look at this, it's a real skill book and a small potion of healing." Keldian answered with a big smile.

"Why using potions, when you can heal with spells and techniques?"

"If you want to heal yourself, you can't use another technique at the same time. It's pretty dangerous and takes a lot of time to heal oneself with water magic during a battle. Life magic is a little bit different, but almost no fighter focuses on that and it still distracts you from the fight. For a caster like me to heal, you can't be using mana at the same time either. So potions are the way to go to heal during a battle." Izzy explained.

"Good to know, so what is the topic of the skill book?"

"Flame Jet. It's a fire spell that lets you channel a continuous flame with a range of at least 20 meters. It's pretty good." Keldian commented.

"So are you reading it, or are we keeping it for later?"

"We keep it for later. We all get an equal share from the dive and Keldian doesn't have enough gold to buy out our shares of the book." Scorpion answered.

"Maybe, we find more skill books and everyone can get one." Izzy suggested with a smile.

"Whatever, let's keep going. These small rooms are giving us good stuff." Hans said.

After this, they went on and cleared the other sixteen rooms. They had to make a few breaks in between to fill up their mana stores, but they were able to gather three more potions and almost a thousand silver coins.