Before Laurence could make a move, Bradley jumped into action. He had a health potion out and took off sprinting toward the injured ranger. Xander kicked the gremlin away - taking a severe clawing to his leg in the process - and Bradley took the opening to roughly grab Jeff's hand. He poured the restorative over it and Jeff's screams gradually dwindled to shudders. He slumped against the wall in relief, hand reflexively opening and closing as he tried to reassure himself it was still functional.

Meanwhile, Podge finally reclaimed aggro and flailed about with his shield, bellowing taunts at the closest gremlins, while Steele and Duck slashed at them. He wasn't using his sword's mana function any more, however, as low on mana as everyone else.

The third gremlin, however, was far enough from the fighters that its full focus remained on Laurence. He definitely would have preferred not having a dedicated gremlin out for his blood, but... one couldn't have everything.

Laurence cast another Air Blade as he retreated, and with that his mana was down to where he'd have to wait for it to regen between each shot. He'd dramatically underestimated the health totals these monsters would have. Even increasing their base health as though they put every point into strength didn't account for this kind of sturdiness. And they weren't plus-types either. Just ordinary level 10 gremlins, all but impossible to kill quickly.

Though several of them were injured before it was over, no one was killed, thanks in part to Bradley's constant alertness.

It took them three hours and another two health potions to clear the second room. The only saving grace was the fact that there were no further scarab swarms. If they'd come after the group while they were distracted fighting the far too flexible and intelligent gremlin ambushes, they could easily have been overrun. It seemed each room had its theme, and wouldn't divert from it.

While the gremlins were individually sturdier and harder to deal with than the scarabs, the lack of overwhelming numbers made it... not exactly easy to keep up, but at least more possible. The gremlins could be cornered and their movements restrained by physical presence, even if they couldn't be cut down as easily.

By the time they finally finished the maze and emerged into the next hallway, Laurence was exhausted. His mana and stamina were both empty, health hovering a bit below half, and he felt worn in a deep way he'd never before experienced. The tension of trying to keep track of everyone, even if it seemed nothing was going wrong, was unrelenting.

Fortunately, the gremlins didn't respawn nearly as quickly as the scarabs had been doing, giving them enough time to recover at least partially between fights, and this room's gremlins didn't have much concept of group tactics. If a gremlin saw one of the humans, it attacked. That was all. They didn't run for help or hold back.

"If this is what the gremlins are like, I do not want to see the boss," Xander said, still out of breath as they came to a stop in the hallway between rooms two and three.

"Maybe we could skip it... just this once."

"No way," Podge interjected. "If this is our leveling speed on gremlins, we definitely want the boss."

"Only if the treasure room has enough healing potions," Laurence insisted. "We're down to three and that's not going to be enough if we keep using them at this rate."

"Then it's a good thing the treasure room is right over there." Steele, a bit further down the hall, pointed to something out of sight around the curve. Everyone crowded over to look, and it took Laurence a moment to see what he was referring to.

They stood by a slope, at the top of a descent to the next area. The third room was completely different from the first two.

It most closely resembled the scree of a rockslide, forming a very long hill down to a parched and barren landscape that stretched out below. There was no pond, no grass, no trees, nothing but stone and sand, the flat ravine floor broken only by what looked like... a village?

Laurence squinted to peer at the distant huts, and... yes, they were definitely huts. Built in a semicircle around the base of a cliff, with goblin patrols and tents strewn about the place. Opposite where they stood, above the village, loomed a sheer cliff cut across by a zig-zagging and treacherously steep series of switchbacks. It would take them a while to climb that path, and leave them completely exposed from the rear.

Atop the cliffside opposite where they stood, Laurence could make out the glint of golden light reflecting off the treasure room's table, and he could almost convince himself he saw the tiny blue glint of the distant bottles that would be their salvation. It certainly looked more crowded than the sparse treasure tables he'd seen in the past.

"Looks pretty straightforward," Steele said, his eyes on the goblin village below. "We have the high ground, so we should be able to pick them off safely before they reach us."

Laurence shook his head, pointing to the massive warg-like kalvex scattered around the area. Some lay across doorways or beside cookfires, others trotted alongside their goblin allies, looking even larger as they loomed over their patrol mates.

Goblins were considerably larger than gremlins, coming about waist high on an average human instead of the gremlins' knee height. They tended to have uniform leathery skin in shades of brown and orange, though a few goblins were so pale as to be nearly albino and others were a deep maroon red.

Kalvex meanwhile all had the general shape of an ox, complete with curving horns that looked fully capable of brutally goring anyone who crossed their path, but the legs and head of a giant wolf. Their shaggy fur came in a variety of colors, from pure black to mottled grey or red-brown. Most of these were dark grey or brown, blending into the shadow of the tents beside which they lay.

Though he'd at first noticed three or four walking with goblin patrols, now he was pointing them out, he counted over a dozen.

"We'll be dead before we can kill half of them. Kalvex are fast and this gentle slope won't slow them down at all. And I doubt we could handle the goblins even if the kalvex were out of the picture."

Grim nods and murmurs, and reassessing looks at the village below.

"We should turn back, shouldn't we?" Xander ventured.

"I'm not going back." Bradley gripped his sword, determination clear in his face and his stance. "You think we'll ever get this kind of leveling opportunity again? This is the most levels I've gotten in one day, bar none, and we're not even to the first treasure room. No way I'm going back."

"Even if you die?"

"We're not going to die." Steele's voice rang with confidence. "We've come this far and we've a long way to go."

"How do you know that?" Xander pressed, and Laurence heard the fear in his voice. All his earlier confidence seemed to have fled, leaving him tremulous after his close brush with death.

"Because we're fighters, not retreaters." Steele reached over and gripped Xander's forearm. "This dread you feel right now, you can either let it rule you, or you can tell it 'thanks for the warning, but I'm going to fight anyway.' If you want to run, that's your choice. But you don't attain victory by retreating. You win by pressing on time after time."

Laurence felt a trickle of envy. He was supposed to be the leader here, but when it came right down to it he was more a tactician than a commander.

He wouldn't have even thought to say those sort of things. He'd have said something blandly encouraging, perhaps. Where had Steele learned to speak like that? With such conviction? Such absolute certainty?

He didn't ask. He only nodded approvingly, as though it had been his idea from the start, and then took a step toward the hallway they'd just traversed.

"But whatever we end up doing, we should retreat for now and rest as long as possible. We absolutely do not want to go into this anything but fully prepared."