I walked into the inn that was experiencing the lunch rush. Within the crowd, I could see the figure of a dwarf waving at me. There was also an elf sitting next to him on the small squarish table. I walked over without waving back, inciting a frown from the dwarf while the elf spoke.

"Glad to see that you are fine. You went missing without telling us, we were worried about you."

I sat down on the chair across the table from Chris and replied.

"Well, there was a bit of an accident and I wasn't able to complete my experiment correctly. And I know Chris, that you're worried about me more because of my rare skills rather than my well being."

"H-haha, what a good joke you have there."

The waitress noticed that a new guest had arrived and came over to get the orders from me. After I ordered for myself, since the other two were already consuming their lunch, the waitress went off to get my order. Aston chose this timing to speak his concern.

"Now that Cliff is back, shouldn't we choose our next request Chris?"

Giving a nod and a "Right.", the elf continued explaining Aston's idea.

"Aston and I were thinking that since we had you joined our party, we could go for something stronger than what we have been hunting. We were thinking of going into a dungeon that our skills could handle."

I Felt curious at what they mentioned since I had no personal experience of it. I also wanted to tease them both at the same time. In according to that, I said,

"What kind of dungeon could that be? And would the two of you drag me down since you're lower level than me?"

"Don't worry, we wouldn’t drag you down."

Chris spoke that with a rare hint of agitation within his voice. So he could get angry.

"Haha, its okay! I can easily slash goblins into two with my axe!"

I felt annoyed that I garnered a different response from the happy-go-lucky dwarf. Deciding that I could always tease him again later, I voiced out a question instead.

"Goblins? Aren't they way weaker than the wolves that we fought?"

"It is true that goblins are weak, but the dungeon that we are going into are full of them. Furthermore, each of them are armed. Which means that there is an increased in their strength and possibly intelligence too. There could be someone leading them which caused this abnormality. We could also salvage the equipments from them for more money."

The conversation stopped momentarily as the waitress came back with a rabbit stew with some bread. That was the only thing that was better than those from the sibling's home. I took a bite of the bread after dipping it into the stew and then continued the conversation at my own pace.

"Too easy. That's what it sounds like. But I'll go along with your plans until I could do something better."

Taking that as my approval, they continued their lunch and we had some chitchats while having our meal. We set off for the dungeon after grabbing the request from the guild.

The journey towards the dungeon was uneventful. We just had to head south into the Vuca mountains range to find it. It was so quiet that it gotten to the point of it being weird. There were no wild animals at all. Only the occasional sound made by the wind disturbed the silence of the mountains. While my party members paid it no mind, I tirelessly spread my spores to act as a warning to us should anything approaches.

With a cave that had its entrance protruding out of the mountain in view, we arrived at our destination. The only information that was given to us by the guild was where and how the entrance of the dungeon looked like and it containing swarms of armed goblins. I only realized when I reached there that the information provided was suspiciously too little. Along with the endless silence, it gave me a premonition that we would regret entering the cave.

Before I could stop them, Aston suddenly dashed in, with Chris following soon after. Not willing to leave them for no definite reasoning, I pushed aside my feelings and gave chase.

I soon came to an abrupt stop as I noticed what shocked or astonished Aston into running into the dark cave. It wasn't dark at all. There was a dim glow of blue to purple hue throughout the wall of the cave. It was some type of plant which I identified as glowing moss.

Name:Glowing mossType:PlantRarity:RareDescription:???Usage:None discoveredIdentify:5%

The sight before us could be considered a wonder of the natural world. We walked slowly down the tunnel within the sight to behold and momentarily forgot what we came here for. By the time I remembered, we were already surrounded.

A swarm of armed goblins had us surrounded while we were dazed by the glowing moss that covered the tunnel. I removed both of them from their trance with a hand chop on to each of their head and they woke up to the sight of goblins attacking. We each drew our weapons to mow down the swarm before they could overrun us.

When the tunnel was littered with corpses of goblins, we could finally have a chance to rest. We had all became ragged and were out of breathe from the onslaught of the goblins which had seemed to never end. Scratches and minor wounds covered our whole bodies in a similar fashion to how corpses covered a battlefield. Aston asked as I tried to confirm my suspicion.

"What was that? How did they suddenly appeared in front of us without our knowledge?"

"We were dazed, it was the moss."

I told of my findings after confirmation with [Spores Identification].

Name:Hallucinating mossType:Poisonous mossRarity:Very rareDescription:These moss are rarely found in caves deep within the mountain. They could cause effects ranging from daze to mental disability when exposed to.Usage:Used in drugs creation to produce a varying daze effects.Identify:85%

"And that doesn't seemed to be all the moss could do."

Chris said that as the illumination provided by the moss turned a gradual red. The corpses having their red blood drained out of them soon turned so dry that they looked likely to crumble to dust once disturbed. My foreboding feeling grew and the source for it appeared.

A humanoid appeared before our eyes. It stood high, well over two metres tall. With its dark red skin, it looked like an entity from hell. There were even protruding horns and glowing red vertical slits eyes to go along with that. With its muscular body that could put many bodybuilders to shame, it lumbered towards us, creaking of its full plate armor followed.

StatuesName:Lord HallucinatorTitle:Procurer of HallucinatoryRace:HobgoblinGender:MaleLevel:?Experience:?%Stats Point:?Class:?Health:?/?Mana:?/?Health regen:?/sMana regen:?/sStrength:?Intelligence:?Dexterity:?Wisdom:?Vitality:?Willpower:?Attack:?-?Defence:?

Skills

(Unidentified)

Effects

???

Identify:3%

"Oh my god, a hobgoblin! Got any information to share, Cliff!? We need all the advantage we could get to win that thing. My blood is boiling to fight a strong opponent like him though!"

"Sadly I couldn't see anything other than his title and name right now. Everything else were left with question marks. I might be able to discover more of his statues with time. Too bad we don't have any!"

I immediately jumped back as he swung down the huge broadsword towards where I stood a second ago. The ground was destroyed as shrapnel of rocks flew from where the sword hit, adding more wounds to my body. The shrapnel had no effect on the big guy as he taunted me.

"Okay, we will get decimated by him in one hit huh? Let's just go with the usual plan, just parry or dodge his attacks if you don't want to be crushed."

Nodding to my plan, Aston and Chris faced him from two sides and attempts to land hits on it without getting hit themselves. I hid in the shadow and waited for the opportunity to strike. With a wide swing of his broadsword being barely parried by Chris, I [Shadow Movement] to his exposed back and stabbed my obsidian dagger into the back of his right elbow. It went through the gap within the armor, but no blood came out from my action. I was met with by an elbow to the face instead.

Generally speaking, crushing weapons worked better against heavily armored opponents as the impact could get transmitted through the armor themselves. But what I did just now went past the armor, yet it did not disabled or injured his arm like what I had intended. Sword would not fare much better than a dagger in this situation and we didn't have mace user. Our only hope lies in the strength of the berserker's axe to cleave through him, armor included. Conveying my idea through thoughts transmission, we changed our tactics.

I swapped my position with Aston and tried my best to accomplish his previous job. It was no easy task to parry the giant with his huge strength so I could only rely on my dodging skills. Each dodge still damaged me as shrapnel from the destroyed tunnel flew my way.

Bidding his time, Aston waited for the perfect opportunity to attack. He used all the power he had garner along with the skill [Rage Cleave] to strike the giant when his strike missed me. The axe cleaved through the air while producing a shrinking sound but came to an impossible stop at the giant's wrist.

The strike landed and cut through the armor and muscle but was stopped by the bones. The hobgoblin growl in rage and launched a punch with his other hand towards Aston. He couldn't move away in time and was going to be smashed by it. All he could do was an attempt to weaken the blow with his axe. The fist landed, but not on just an axe. An elf flew in with his sword and both of their weapons shattered into millions of fragments as they flew towards the wall from the impact, the weapon taking the brunt of the hit. Taking this lapse of his concentration on me, I looked at his updated statues in hope of finding a weakness.

StatuesName:Lord HallucinatorTitle:Procurer of HallucinatoryRace:HobgoblinGender:MaleLevel:27Experience:?%Stats Point:0Class:Drug LordHealth:344/420Mana:80/80Health regen:2.1/sMana regen:0.4/sStrength:60(90)Intelligence:45(36)Dexterity:20(24)Wisdom:10(8)Vitality:35(42)Willpower:20(12)Attack:28-108Defence:40

Skills

(Unidentified)

Effects

On Drugs(17 hours 29 minutes)

Identify:67%

On Drugs

Current drugs consumed includes:

Mind to Body:

+50% Strength

+20% Dexterity

+20% Vitality

-20% Intelligence

-20% Wisdom

-40% Willpower

"That attack only took 20% of his health!? It took everything that we had to land it too."

There was no reply to my monologue as both Aston and Chris had been knocked out. All three of us would die if I this continued. I attempted to use my trump card against him earlier. It didn't managed to contaminate him even when I had to sacrificed my health to hit him with my blood spores at point blank range. I doubt that I could possess him in the first place due to the level differences though.

Using the only card I had left, I called out to him.

"Hey, you ugly thing."

He turned to where the voice came from, ready to swing his sword down. Only that there was nothing there. He became confused and using this opportunity, I jumped up to his face and used [Gorge] into the shadows of the eye socket on his helmet. I didn’t have a vulnerable spot on his back to trigger [Backstab] with, so I had to choose a different spot instead. To my surprised, [Gorge] still triggered [Backstab]'s effect since I was considered unseen.

What actually happened was that I was in his vision all along. The usage of [Spores Suggestion] made it seemed like I wasn't there. It was a gamble that I had to make as I wasn't sure if the skill could actually made him lost sight of me.

With the stab into the eye, the drug lord bleed profusely and went berserk, swinging his weapon wildly at his surroundings. I moved around him, tripping him into the holes that the effectively blind hobgoblin made to tired him out. I also looked for other vulnerable spots that I could attack through without being hit by his wild swings.

He ended himself before I had the chance to as he destroyed a part of the tunnel wall and it fell on him, burying him alive. We were lucky that the cave was still stable enough and did not collapsed as a whole, burying us alive with him. I slowly dragged the two who were still unconscious slowly out of the cave before more enemies could find us.

-----

Author's Notes: So, a boss fight kinda chapter! What do you think? Epic? Boring? Not enough descriptions?(probably the case, q.q I'm bad with descriptions)