Chapter 034

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“ “ for speech.

* * for actions.

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After a few hours of travelling through the woods, Jack and his half-elf companion had reached the cave, which was previously infested with giant spiders. He cautiously entered the cave and went through an oval tunnel till he reached the first cavern

His companion followed behind him. In the dim lighting ahead, provided by some sort of lichen growing on the cave ceiling overhead, he observed a group of goblins. There were around twelve of those ugly short, stocky and green humanoids on what seemed like a crude patrol.

Jack: ‘So the game-world is emergent and dynamic. No more spiders to infest this cave, so nearby goblins took over it. So in future, can’t expect dungeons to have the same type of mobs. They may change depending on what quests were completed!’

He gestured at his companion and spoke softly:

Jack: “Stay back. I want to see how much I have improved, from the last time I took them on.”

Bob: “You sure? Even if they are weaklings, don’t underestimate the strength of numbers.”

Jack: “Meh. I’ll manage. Worst comes to worst, I can always summon Charlie and flee.”

Jack then unsheathed the fine iron dagger from his boots and activated force blade. He then silently prowled circling around the goblins towards the most isolated one. After a successful assassination of the first goblin, he was creeping towards the second one, when a trio of goblins turned and saw Jack and a corpse of their comrade.

The short ugly brutes raised a war cry and charged at Jack. The rest of the goblins were alerted to his presence and charged. Eleven goblins were in a mad rush towards Jack. He sheathed his dagger, and pointed both of his palms towards the goblins.

In almost a second, a couple of soul fire bolts erupted from each of his palms. Each soul fire bolt damaged a goblin for around 55% HP! One of the goblins died as two consecutive soulfire bolts struck him. Each of the other soulfire bolts hit a couple of goblins bringing them below half of their HP.

A couple of the charging goblins were entangled on their comrade’s corpse. Jack took this opportunity to unleash a Soul Scream. Around 8 of the goblins were stunned for a couple of seconds. He took this opportunity to prepare a Soulfire Breath.

As the goblins recovered from their momentary stun and charged at him, he took that opportunity to teleport using soulfire shift. His teleport enabled him to position himself in a tactically advantageous position and he unleashed his prepared soulfire breath.

All but one of the goblins was caught in the AoE of soulfire breath. Two of the goblins who had less than 50% HP due to receiving the previous soulfire bolts died instantly. The rest of the goblins went from full health to under 10% HP by taking just one Soulfire Breath!

While this may seem impressive, it was expected for a few reasons. Chief among them was that Jack had an advantage of around 20 levels over the goblins and the goblins had extremely low magical defense. Furthermore, his spirit eating skills had added an impressive amount of stats to his mental attributes, and stats wise his intelligence was far ahead of mages of his level despite his investment into vitality.

After seeing most of them in critical state, there was a grin on his face as he enabled mana claws, entropic leech and charged into the fucking ugly monsters! He dodged most of the strikes of the goblins, and with each swipe of his augmented fingers caused a goblin in critical condition to die.

He got hit a couple of times, but the damage done was too low to even dent his HP bar! It was as if his previous challenge was a cakewalk! He had moderate physical defense due to his investment in vitality and his light leather armor. While it might not have been much to a monster of equivalent/higher level specializing in physical attacks, it was enough to make him a Juggernaut to the goblins.

After dispatching the goblins in critical condition, and taking a few scratches along the way, he dispatched the last goblin with full health with only three mana-claw enhanced unarmed attacks. His companion approached him as he began looting the weapons of the goblins. He checked his status, and slaughtering a dozen goblins had only given him 4.9% of exp towards the next level!

Jack: “Am I awesome or what?”

Bob: *deadpan look in his eyes* “They were all dumb melee brutes, at least 20 levels lesser than you. Don’t let it get to your head.”

Jack: “Yeah you are correct. Trash like them is easy to clear, but the gains are almost non-existent too. The cave is quite large, so let’s slaughter the shitty goblins as quickly as we can.”

His companion grunted in response and they went deeper into the cave, slaughtering the goblins as they went. They systematically cleared all goblins in the first level. Jack estimated that they had killed around a couple of hundred goblins in a few hours, whereas the exp gain had been enough to level him up once.

In the next level, they encountered an additional type of enemy. It was around a foot taller than goblins, and better equipped with fur armor and weapons which appeared better maintained. Other than that, it looked exactly like a goblin with its ugly face, green skin and muscular build. They were hobgoblins, a lv60 monster.

The first group of enemies they encountered consisted of six enemies in total. One of them was the hobgoblin, and the rest were goblins. This time both Jack and Bob attacked together, as they didn’t want to underestimate a new foe.

Bob shimmered with purple black energy and appeared next to the hobgoblin. He hit the hobgoblin with his axe for around 15% damage. Jack took advantage of the disruption in the goblins to prepare a soulfire breath and everyone, including his companion was caught in the AoE.

All the goblins lost over 90% of their HP in a single attack and were in critical condition, whereas the hobgoblin lost around 60% HP, leaving it with barely a forth. His companion was unaffected by soulfire breath, receiving no damage. He appreciated the utility of the soulfire element. It was perhaps the perfect element for offensive AoEs!

Due to this overwhelming display of firepower, the agro shifted from Bob to Jack. He readied mana claws and entropic leech, as the goblins rushed towards him. He easily dispatched goblin after goblin, weaving between their attacks, while Bob finished the hobgoblin in a couple of regular attacks. The whole battle took under 10 seconds to conclude.

After the first skirmish with the foes of this level of the dungeon concluded, he looted the corpses. The weapon of the hobgoblin was marginally better than those of the goblin; it also had a couple of silvers and some worthless trinkets, which would classify as junk loot.

He had earned around 2.8% experience from the whole battle. While it was better than that provided by the goblins, it was still too little to level up on. His companion being higher leveled than him, would definitely earn even less exp!

As they went deeper and deeper into the second level of the dungeon, they encountered larger groups of goblins with more and more hobgoblins. He summoned Charlie as much as the cool down permitted. The groups were from around five to twelve in total, with around one to four hobgoblins. However, due to their low magical defense and the level advantage Jack and his companion had, it took only around six hours to clear level two of the dungeon.

They had cleared around a hundred hobgoblins with around 450 goblins in that level, though they did have to take breaks for repairing equipment and regenerating PP and stamina. The hobgoblins provided better exp, and he had leveled-up a couple of times to level 69 as a result.

They entered the third level of the dungeon, and encountered the first group of enemies. It was a group of seven hobgoblins. While it required a bit more effort than the previous floor, it was still a cakewalk with his companion’s teleport and his soulfire breath combo, which bought them under half HP. After that, a bit of kiting with soul strikes and his companion’s melee attacks finished them off.

They went deeper and deeper into the third level of the dungeon, and soon they encountered a group of five hobgoblins, but one of them had a reddish tint on their skin. It was equipped with leather armor, and a well maintained mace. They engaged the group of monsters, in the regular fashion. Bob teleported to the red skinned hobgoblin and slashed it with his axe. The hobgoblin variant lost only 10% HP with that attack.

It retaliated at Bob with its mace, smashing Bob for around 6% HP. Jack prepared a soulfire breath and it caught everyone in its AoE. The regular hobgoblins lost around 60% HP; however the variant hobgoblin lost only around 40% HP! With his AoE spell, all the hobgoblins switched their agro towards him.

He prepared another soulfire breath. But before unleashing it, he kited them for a bit and used soulfire shift to teleport behind them. As he unleashed his prepared soulfire breath, he caught all the hobgoblins in its AoE. The regular hobgoblins died with screams as the smell of cooked flesh hung in the air.

The red skinned hobgoblin, however, still had around 10% HP left. It was finished by a strong overhead chop by his companion. His companion had lost around 12% HP in this encounter. As he collected the loot, he made idle conversation with his companion.

Jack: “The red skinned hobgoblin seems to hit harder than the others. It will take quite a while to clear this floor. Does any of your equipment needs repairs?”

Bob: “Not yet. I do need to rest soon though.”

Jack: “OK. After we clean a few more caverns, you can nap for a couple of hours.”

They went deeper into the cave, and encountered more of the red-skinned hobgoblin variant. It took significantly longer to clear, as the red-skinned hobgoblin variants were sturdier and did more damage than the usual hobgoblins. This resulted in longer breaks for HP regeneration. However the exp was better too and a single hobgoblin variant gave around by 1.9% exp at lv69! This was to be expected as the red hobgoblin variants were around lv80!

Jack had to log out for dinner in real life, while clearing the third level of the dungeon. It took around a day in-game, after RL dinner on Saturday, to clear most of the third level of the dungeon. Outside the entrance of the clearing of the previous giant spider boss of the dungeon, there was a group of around twenty-seven hobgoblins! A third of them were the stronger red-skinned variant.

Jack: “Well, that encounter will be a pinch. I wonder what the boss is, to have so many hobgoblins as guards, outside its lair.”

Bob: “I don’t think we should tackle them head on. It might result in death.”

Jack: ‘Thank you, Captain Obvious!’

Jack: “Hmm. Let us retreat for now. I will lure them; one-by-one if possible.”

He and his half-elf companion retreated. He then scraped off some dirt from the cavern floor, and created a small muddy puddle with some water from his canteen. He then rubbed his exposed skin to mask his scent as much as possible. He then stealthily approached the hobgoblins.

As soon as they were at the edge of the range of his spiral mana bolt spell, he fired a force bolt while retreating carefully. Around a third of the group went to investigate, and Jack steadily lured them where Bob was waiting in ambush, and soon the battle began.

It was a difficult battle, but nothing they couldn’t handle as they had become familiar fighting the hobgoblins, and could anticipate their moves easily. However, he and his companion both had lost around a third of their HP.

Before they could completely regenerate their HP, another six regular hobgoblins with three variant hobgoblins found them and engaged them. Fortunately, due to his companion’s ability to sense hostility, they weren’t ambushed and dealt with them. They rested again, but the last third of the hobgoblins didn’t attack them, presumably being on guard duty.

They engaged the last third of the hobgoblins and rested again. Jack also repaired all their equipment, to be in tip-top shape before tackling whatever boss the cave had in store for them. Fortunately, he hadn’t used Charlie in the latest battles with the hobgoblins, so Summon Charlie was available and not on cooldown.

He entered the boss-room of the dungeon with his companion, expecting a powerful boss. However, what he saw was something he absolutely had not expected. The boss-room was significantly altered, from the last time he had visited it.

There were multiple shallow pools with a greenish viscous liquid in it. Each pool had an ugly monster, which appeared to be a female goblin, who were submerged waist down in each pool. There were around twenty or so pools and each of them had multiple wriggling forms in it, like tadpoles but with limbs. Jack realized that those were breeding pits of the goblins, and the tadpole like shapes swimming were baby goblins.

Jack: “A disgusting sight. Well, let us clear this infestation, shall we? I will start from the leftmost pool and you start from the rightmost. Once we kill the female goblins, let me think how to deal with the pools. Oh and Charlie can help too.”

Bob: “Alright. If we don’t deal with it, in a few days the cave will be full of goblins again.”

Jack then summoned Charlie and instructed him mentally to systematically kill the gestating goblin females with his soulfire breath and proceeded to his corner of the breeding grounds. The goblin females were weaker than the regular goblins, and one of his soulfire bolt was enough to kill them.

They made no attempt to leave their pool or take any offensive action against their slaughter, but made pitiful cries whenever Jack, Bob or Charlie approached them… as if resigning to their fates. In a matter of few minutes all the goblin females were killed and he confirmed that at lv72, they gave a measly amount of exp.

Jack: “So any ideas how to kill all the worms in the pools? I am not killing them one by one...It will take far too long.”

Bob: “The best way would be to poison each of the pools.”

Jack: “I don’t have any poisons left… I drank all of them.”

Bob: *poker face* “OK…”

Jack: “Hey don’t look at me all weird. It was to raise the proficiency of my skill! Besides there were acolytes on hand to continuously heal me. Returning to the topic of the pools…”

While brooding on the efficient way to destroy the goblin breeding pools, he got a mental nudge from Charlie, who went to the nearest pool and used his soulfire breath like a flamethrower. Jack could see a number of HP bars blinking into and out of existence signifying that plenty of goblin spawns were getting killed.

Jack: “Good boy Charlie! Although it’s a bit slow, but it is the best option we have. Let us get to work. Bob?”

Bob: *guarded look* “I will pass. My only AoE skill has a very short range and it will be far quicker for you to use your breath spell like Charlie.”

Jack: *shrugging* “Alright. I am not sure what is beyond the pedestal, or how long we have to spend there. I just don’t want these goblins growing up and biting us in the ass. Killing them all isn’t even worth it otherwise.”

He and his pet then systematically exterminated the goblin spawn-pools, carrying out genocide. He and his pet used multiple soulfire breaths on a single pool till no HP bar was blinking into existence (to be roasted out of existence an instant later). After a couple of pools, Charlie had been unsummoned and Jack cleared the pools by himself. It took him over an hour to thoroughly exterminate them.

After making the dungeon 100% goblin free, he and his companion approached the altar with the depression. He withdrew the modified coin given by the druids, and it fit on the depression. The slab of stone behind the altar creaked and groaned as it slid, revealing a narrow marble passage, which was lit up in an ethereal electric blue.

Jack collected the coin from the depression of the altar and quickly followed his companion through the passage. As they stepped through it, the stone slab slid behind them, sealing them from rest of the dungeon.

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A/N: And another chapter, a little less than 3k words! Please feel free to comment regarding your thoughts on this chapter.

My hiatus ends, and next week onwards expect a chapter a week as usual.

What is at the end of the marble corridor? Is it some kind of Guardian/Boss? Or is it another dungeon? Find out in next week’s chapter!

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