We set off towards the northern parts, eager to finish up what we had set off to do. As expected, the trees at this part of the forest looked particularly dead and withered, the usual sounds of insects buzzing and birds chirping were nonexistent and the air felt heavy and onimous.

We followed the path to see where it would take us and soon enough, we could see the looming figure of the castle. It was reasonably large with extremely high walls. We slowly circled the perimeter of the castle, on the lookout for perhaps minions on guard duty. However, we found no such patrol and we found out which side the main gate of the castle was and the other 3 walls just served as deterrance. The main gate was huge as well and made entirely out of steel. We could see 2 skeletal soldiers standing inside the gate but they did not see us. We quickly left the vicinity of the castle upon checking it out.

“Okay guys. So it's confirmed that skeletal soldiers are within the castle walls. We should expect our enemy to be some sort of undead force with skeletal soldiers as one of their preliminary forces. Let's check the surroundings to find out more.”

The forest was unusually empty for some reason and as we walked and walked, no signs of an enemy even came close to us. It was an abandoned forest if there was even such a thing. Suddenly, we heard monotonous clanking coming from somewhere further away. We went to check it out.

A few miles away from the castle, there was a cave. Skeletal soldiers could be seen going into the cave and coming out with a cart in their hands. The cart was filled with stones of some sort.

“Iron. I could recognise iron ore from a mile away after apprenticing at the blacksmith.” Soup said.

It looks like the cave was a mine. A mine infested with skeletal soldiers who were digging out ores which presumably would be supplies for their stronghold. However there was something else. A werewolf was holding a whip and lashing out at the skeletal soldiers. It was functioning somewhat as a slave driver, making sure the soldiers did not skimp on their work. It looks like werewolves were also part of the enemy forces.

“So guys? Plan of attack?”

Breadtalk charged in yelling “NO NEED FOR PLANS PUSSIES!”

“Well looks like we got our plan.”

The 5 of us emerged out of the forest and charged straight at the werewolf and his pack of soldiers at the entrance. Even though the plan was stupid, dumb, reckless, immature and so extremely idiotic on so many levels, sometimes these are the plans that actually work out best. They did not have much time to react so they could only charge back at us. The werewolf however howled first. I had a bad feeling it was calling for help. I immediately used all my mana to cast divine judgement on him. I had no time to think too much. If he was indeed calling for reinforcements I had to shut him down immediately. And I did. The HP bar went from full to zero within half a second.

Soup was engaging all the skeletal soldiers which only amounted to about 5 of them since only 5 of them were present that time. He used berserkers call and with Breadtalk and Xantos by his side, they finished up the 5 of them in literally 10 seconds. We were only about level 90 but because I had semi inflated stats and Breadtalk had extremely inflated stats, we were able to make it look easy. We also had the elemental advantage as I could coat their weapons with holy aura almost without concentrating by now. The mana cost was also easily attainable with the absurd amounts of regeneration Beathoven gave us.

“Entrance cleared. Into the mines?”

We all agreed and slowly went into the mines. They were well lit with torches and the sound of monotonous clanking still went on ahead. I assume the workers did not know what happened because of the sheer amount of speed we took down the party at the entrance. It was kind of like an assasination mission and it felt great. The mine was narrow at first but when we walked about 3 minutes in, it suddenly opened into something that looked like a great hall. It was about the size of 2 football fields with many skeletal warriors using pickaxes hacking away at stones. It was also extremely tall and there were ladders and everything already made. It was like a huge treehouse. I wanted to count the number of skeletal warriors but it was almost impossible. There were also about 20 werewolves in different parts of this massive amount of land. I could see a twinkle of excitement in Breadtalk's eyes like he just played pokemon for the first time and I cast rooted on him immediately.

“Hey!”

“Before you go running off into maybe hundreds or even a thousand skeletal warriors for this we need a plan you bitch.”

“But I really wanna! Come on!”

“No.”

“Alright fine. Then I just have to do it my way.”

“What?”

“HEY IDIOTS! WE'RE HEREEEEEEEEEE!” Breadtalk shouted with everything he got. It did not help that as large an area this was, it was enclosed perfectly so echos could be heard after he finished and since the last word was “here”, basically that word could be heard about 10 times coming from our direction.

We were unsure how to react. But with about a few hundred soldiers charging at us and werewolves howling issuing commands at our direction, instinct takes over.

“SOMETIMES WE SHOULD JUST LET YOU DIE YOU RETARD CHILD. RUNNNNNNN!”

We ran to the entrance of the cave and there was clearly a stampede after us. I thought about running back to the village but with an army of undead hot on our heels, it was not going to be a wise choice. Then it dawned on me. The entrance of the mine was narrow.

“GUYS! BOTTLENECK!”

I cast a holy field inside the cave and went in to stand my ground. The other members got the message and they did their short preparations as well. The stampede got louder and louder and soon they were within sight. An endless sea of skeletal soldiers could be seen but since the tunnel was narrow, it could only fit about 5 adults standing side by side. Let the orgy begin.

It was in these sort of situations that the chaotic melody proved its worth. The regen it gave us was so high that we could fight endlessly if the enemy could not burst us down. We just needed to make sure they could not get to Beathoven who was sitting behind us, playing songs that increased our attack levels and decreased their defence levels so we could finish them off faster. Soup was busy taking on all the aggro with his berserkers call and it was quite a scene, to see a gladiator with his blood red weapon due to gladiator's rage doing what he excelled at doing. However, all the attacks that were raining down upon him also proved too much for him to handle. His HP bar was going down at a moderate speed. However, thanks to Xantos, I now had the lesser heal spell so I could heal Soup as well as damage the skeletal warriors around him. Breadtalk was slashing every skeletal soldier in sight with his dual daggers and it looks like the poison became more lethal. The soldiers he engaged had their HP decrease steadily and quickly and Breadtalk made full use of it. He did not just engage one. He would just slash one to poison him and proceed to ignore him and dive within the mountains of other soldiers, poisoning them all one by one. Every time a skeletal soldier was poisoned he took about 30 seconds and he would be dead. That was like 3% of HP every second. Talk about some serious poison.

Then, the werewolves came into sight. They were blocked by the mountains of soldiers being bottlenecked by the tunnel but apparently, they were more nimble and capable warriors. They leaped and used the heads of the other soldiers as footing and leaped towards us at an impressive pace. This was bad.

We could not possibly hold 20 werewolves away from all of us while hundreds of soldiers were still attacking us. I had to think fast. But apparently it wasn't a very hard problem to solve. I made a thick wall of earth appear from the sides of the cave that covered half the height of the cave, leaving us free to engage the soldiers whilst making sure the werewolves would have no other way to approach us than to join the rest of the soldiers queueing up for their death. After playing this game for so long, I realised that positioning and terrain usually affected the battle more than strength of the monsters or ourselves. I was glad to find a class that could make full use of this.

The battle lasted for about an hour. It was non stop slashing by Soup who got his gladiator's rage buff to the point where every power strike he made was a one hit K.O for the soldiers and his max HP was over 10000. He could have solo-ed the horde from then on but we also wanted to hasten the process. I casted a new holy field using almost all my mana that drained their health at an even faster rate and I used the remaining amounts to heal Soup periodically. Breadtalk was just doing what he had been already doing for the past hour, poisoning every skeletal soldier he could see and reach. His luck levels were ridiculous. Almost every attack missed and those that hit only grazed him and whenever his dagger landed, the foe was immediately poisoned as his attacks were unusually accurate towards the vital areas. I only needed to heal Breadtalk once every 10 minutes as compared to Soup who needed healing like once every 30 seconds. Beathoven was now just playing songs to increase his mastery level and not even focusing on prioritising the buff and debuff effects already. Xantos just helped with the healing as she could also not do much due to the narrow space of the cave. Just when we thought everything was done, 5 werewolves emerged as the new opponents and we had a new challenge ahead of us. I immediately casted four walls of earth around Beathoven as his protection was our number one priority. I left a small gap so we could still receive the buffs and debuffs from his music.

Soup proceeded to engage two at once and Breadtalk went charging towards one. Xantos was keeping one busy so that left one lunging at me. I finally had a chance to use my katana which was dying for battle. I turned on electrical impulse, swift steps, holy aura for my weapon and used gravity crush immediately as he lunged. It was a counter and a critical hit and to my surprise, the level 100 werewolf was immediately reduced to about half health. After a few more rounds of combat, the werewolf was dead and it all happened so fast. I looked around. Xantos was still fighting hers but she was winning so there was no problem. Breadtalk was almost done with his no doubt his poison worked on the werewolf as well and Soup was down to half health already but due to his gladiator's rage buff he was so buffed up now that both werewolves were already lying dead on the floor next to him.

Breadtalk finished up his and I cast a quick divine's judgement on the one Xantos was busy with and it fell dead. 5 werewolves down in easily less than a minute. We were clearly not the same party we were about 3 nights ago when one werewolf alone took us about 3-5 minutes to kill. However the situation was very much in our favour now. Gladiator's rage was an extremely potent skill when Soup has already killed like more than 300 soldiers by himself. His attack power would probably be more than double his original and his HP as well. The bottleneck tactic was so well done we could only thank the terrain of the mine for this opportunity. 5 more werewolves came to engage their death as we repeated the process. Finally after one and a half hours of non stop combat which could only be made possible by chaotic melody with the regeneration for me to keep up my spells and hp regen for the rest as well as the bottleneck, we were done. The loot was extraordinary as well. We had more than 100 gold from killing all the monsters which could go a long way as our equipment were severely mismatched from our levels as we did not have the chance to go restock on equipment. We made camp at the entrance of the mine so I could cook lunch and we could repair our stuff. The battle also made us level up like crazy.

My cooking reached intermediate level 1 along with Soup's repair skill and with that he attained the blacksmith skill. There was so much iron lying around that we thought it would be a waste to leave it lying around here. Soup made me use fire magic to quickly melt some of the iron into the shape of a forge. Then, he proceeded to start a fire in the forge, using the coke he borrowed from the village and my magic to start the fire and act as a blower. He made me use earth magic to build high density bricks to line the pit such that the iron forge would not melt with high temperatures. He then started creating daggers which did not need a super hot fire not much iron.

While Soup and I were busy with blacksmithing, Beathoven was still busy playing songs to raise his proficiency. Breadtalk was with Xantos venturing further into the mines to explore the place. After about 2 hours, they came back with a new discovery. Deep within the mines were more monsters but they resided extremely deep within them and they were about level 140. They were called Ironhides. Ironhides were monsters that lived near places with iron as they ate iron to grow up. From their name, ironhides had iron for a tough exterior in most places and the more they ate, the stronger they would become. It was no surprise that they could be found in the mines. Another trait about ironhides were that they were creatures that loved soltitude. They never went around in packs, they don't even hang out as a family or something. They just loved to be alone.

“Well I guess hunting level 140 monsters would be fun. Especially since they don't hang around in big groups.”

“Yea lets do it!”

We finished up what we were doing and rushed down further into the mines. We saw the ironhides when we reached another main chamber of the mine. I heard about ironhides from a friend of mine who was playing RR for quite some time and he was quite proud of slaying one himself. Now I know why. Ironhides were humongous. It was a normal monster but each was about the size of the king cobra we fought 2 nights ago. Assuming what my friend told me was correct, ironhides usually will not attack unless you attack them first. We strategically went for the most isolated one first and our objective was to bring it down as fast as possible. There was no knowing if the other ironhides would join the fight even if they loved to be alone.

“Beathoven you wanna try out the new song you wrote?”

“Sure.”

Reunion was played and suddenly, I had a warm fuzzy feeling inside that sort of linked me to the rest of my party. I also instinctively knew that I could pass them some of my HP and MP at any time.

“Let's try things out then. Guys you wanna pass me some mana?”

“Sure.”

I looked at my mana bar. They passed me about a total of 4000 mana which was about all they had. I had about 9000 mana which was insane. I decided not to be stingy about it. Iron should be weak against fire so I just went with my instinct.

“Divine Judgement”

A flaming sword pierced the skull of the nearest ironhide and it went down immediately. All the hp gone. It was basically a one hit KO move that someone should never be able to do against a monster about 40 levels higher than yourself which had quite a bit of HP. To be fair I think its magic resistance is quite low and it was more of a physical resistant type monster instead.

“Holy shit dude one spell and we get about 10% exp from this?”

We looked around the room. There were not many ironhides in this chamber. Roughly about 10 but maybe even deeper into the mines there were more. We decided to make the best out of it as these monsters gave insane amounts of EXP and we could kill them in one shot.

Beathoven changed his party buff to chaotic melody and we regen-ed all the mana i used which took about 20 seconds. It was insane recovery but what else do you expect of a class which only specialised in buffing other people?

He then changed to reunion and we continued this pattern. Reunion, transfer mana, divine judgement, chaotic melody. Rinse and repeat. Every 30 seconds one ironhide went down so in 5 minutes the room was cleared. It was also very neatly done as the nearby ironhides didn't even have a hint of what was going on it seemed.

We cleared the remaining of the mines which had 2 or 3 large chambers remaining and a little surprise awaited us at the end. There was a little room at the end of the mines which looked extremely neat and tidy. There was a bed, some books and even some equipment on the desk. We took a look at what I could only assume to be a rest room and decided to take the stuff. There was a book that caught my eye. “The Earth Goddess, Gaia.”

Soup managed to find a chestplate that was better than the one he was equipping now so he put that on. Breadtalk looked in ridiculous places and he actually managed to find a secret stash of gold just under the mattress of the bed. Beathoven managed to find a music score within the stash of books so he took that along with him. What was a music score doing in a rest room in the mines I had no idea but we just took what we could find and got out of there.

When we finished the mine expedition, it was already dark so we decided to head back to the village. Upon reaching the village, there was an unexpected guest waiting for our arrival.

“You all certainly took your own sweet time.”

“Valhalla?? What are you doing here?”

“I have some updated news for you. The evil forces within the castle wars have already finished their preparations. They will set off tomorrow night to raid this village and turn it to dust. How I know of this is not important. It is without a doubt 100% reliable so I have to ask that you are to raid the castle instead latest by tomorrow afternoon to finish this once and for all.”

“What?! The polite way to do it is usually to give us notice 3 working days in advance you know... But oh well we finished mapping this area already so I guess its fine. We will set off tomorrow morning to finish this.”

“Alright I leave this in your hands. By the way great job or taking care of Xantos. You must have quite some amount of light mana to be able to raise him. You should find him useful in tomorrow's raid.”

“You better give me a hefty reward for doing this for you man.”

“Should you complete the quest, the rewards will speak for itself.”

Valhalla vanished and we headed back to the house to rest.

“So it's tomorrow huh..”

“We better get some rest.”

“Guys I have a surprise for all of you tomorrow.”

“Save it Breadtalk, your surprises are usually life endangering.”

“Be prepared for tomorrow muahahahaha.”

By now we were all above level 100, we came this far in less than a week after leaving Junad. However, would this be enough? Castle fights with armies of skeletal warriors and werewolves which won't have the narrowness of today's cave to help us. Furthermore without a doubt it would be our first boss fight. We would have enough regen with chaotic melody to thrash it out for a long time with it but if it had enough damage to inflict 2000 points of HP, nothing was going to stop it from one hitting me or Beathoven or Breadtalk. There were many conditions to consider for tomorrow's fight. But for now, what we all needed was some quality rest in preparation for the big raid.

“May Loki be with us.” Prayed Breadtalk.

Little did they know, Loki was always with them. Especially for tomorrow.

End of Chapter 12