[D'sP] Isn't Healing Rare - Chapter 478

The team of six delvers form up to face the nine helmeted goats, which charge as soon as they notice the team. The resulting clash is a bit of a stalemate. Three goats are bashed aside, but the tank and off tank are injured. Except the delvers have someone with healing magic.

Doyle turns to Ally, ‘Isn’t healing magic still rare?’

Ally, ‘Healers are rare and better healing is hard to learn for anyone else. That? That does heal things like cuts and bruises, but it won’t set even a broken pinky or do more than stabilize a concussion. Though the fact even a minor healing spell is becoming so well known? That is decent progress.’

Doyle, ‘Would it help that at least where I lived, we got taught some about how the body works?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Yeah, that would make a bruise healing spell a lot simpler to cast. Anyway, they’re finishing up the goats.’

Yep, despite the seeming stalemate of the first clash, the delvers prove proficient enough to turn the tides. It seems they managed to prevent any of the goats from being able to retreat back and charge the group a second time. So with the goats defeated, they harvest what safe brush is in the room.

Which leads to their entering what most people think of as the break room. A fact that Doyle finds amusing. It represents both the fact that people use the room to take a break and that it is like a break room as there are fruit snacks. There are raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries and a beehive.

Though watching the group harvest the berries, it reminds Doyle of something. ‘Didn’t I set up these berry bushes to have no harvesting failure?’

Ally shrugs, ‘That sort of rings a bell? And they don’t seem to be failing, so yeah.’

Doyle, I’m just asking because I remember the bear having problems with the berries.’

Ally, ‘That is weird. Maybe non-sapient delvers are treated differently?’

Doyle, ‘Bah, maybe I saw wrong and it was just the honey vanishing. Because this team is harvesting one hundred percent of the berries right now.’

And they most certainly are doing that. Though they leave the honey alone. Doyle’s money is on them just not having a proper container for the stuff.

Berries harvested, they enter the second to last room where the kobold camp is located.

And they make quick work of them. Doyle hadn’t been paying too much attention to the matter, but besides the tanks, everyone else is a magic user. So they trivialized the fight by neutralizing all the magic and letting the ranks handle things.

It is at this point that they diverge from the previously observed behavior. They don’t actually start looting the olives; instead, they head into the last room and beating the lady and her five goats. It is only then that they backtrack to the previous room and harvest the olives.

Though instead of Doyle being able to follow this team through the following rooms, they leave. This irritates Doyle as they seemed competent enough to keep going. He does take this as a chance to do what he was here for in the first place.

So over on the first floor’s original, Doyle replaced the faux olive tree with an actual living olive tree. A tree which he watched for a while.

And nothing happens.

The tree acts like it did before, except now it was alive. Both the expected outcome and the desired one. This was what Doyle wanted even over the tree being better in some way. No need for something that special on the first floor.

Satisfied, Doyle and Ally look towards the second floor. There isn’t anyone actively running it at the moment. Well, no one low-level. People wanting the ore from floor three still need to go through two.

Still, with how popular Wolf’s Rest and the dungeon have gotten, they don’t have to wait too long and there is another team to follow. Which leads right into Doyle sighing. They go from the empty entrance room and into the second room with the boulders spread around.

This room has two kobolds waiting in ambush. Except the delvers obviously know about said ambush already. Sure, the kobolds don’t always ambush down the same place, but the moment they pop up? Well, the delvers were ready and both kobolds got ranged attacks to the face. And unlike the floor one group, these delvers don’t bother searching for the mint plant you can harvest.

Instead, the six delvers go right to the other tunnel in the room, which is on the same wall as the tunnel they entered from. This leads to an empty room just a bit longer than a small room with another tunnel at the back on the left. Which they take directly to a room with some actual challenge.

This room is as big as the kobold ambush room, but has a pile of rocks that breaks up the room and gives it a U shape. With the challenge coming from the fact that this is the first instance of a kobold goatherd. There are six goats under one kobold’s orders.

Doyle and Ally watch the fight happen and both are satisfied with the results. It wasn’t necessarily any more life-threatening. However, it lasted longer and with the kobold being off to the other side of the U; the delvers weren’t able to snipe them.

Though this placement also made it harder for the kobold to actually lead. A trade-off worth the price. Not that a kobold on the second floor was going to be some tactical genius. If anything, not being able to give orders besides reminding them to stick together might be the best help they can provide.

Ally, ‘Oh! They are harvesting stuff?’

And she isn’t wrong. While they ignore the mint, this group makes sure to grab what sage they can.

Doyle, ‘Well, they’re a relatively new team. Maybe they don’t know the market prices? Sure, sage has some value, but mint is really popular for food and tea. Maybe the value will shift when they find more concrete uses for sage, but that time isn’t now.’

Whatever the case, the delvers soon move onto a room with a history. This long, slanted room, carved with the intent of acceleration was where Sammy broke her shield and arm. It caused quite a scare at the time for Ace’s people. And to mark that, one of the three axebeaks that call this place home was altered to look quite a bit more menacing with the full crescent blade beak and a ruby edge.

This room could be quite deadly. Not this time, though. If anything, the birds’ performance was a little embarrassing. Doyle didn’t blame them. These delvers simply knew a good counter against them.

Since the axebeaks charge straight down, this leaves them vulnerable. Which for this team takes the form of an ice slick. The variant manages to stay on its feet, but the others end up tumbling the rest of the way. Which was enough to turn a potentially deadly fight into one that is only slightly challenging.

Then the party is right into another U-shaped room with a goatherd kobold and six goats. Looking down from above, it is actually a mirror of the first room and so finished off in the same way. And given the mirrored nature of the room, the fact it leads to another long slanted room with axebeaks isn’t the most shocking. Though four of the birds this time.

However, what comes next is new. A big open room with a high ceiling that is almost as big as the entire first floor. And in this room, there are three ramps that cause the floor to get higher and higher, zigzagging like a Z or an N depending on which way you look at it.

So, given the ramps, there are obviously more axebeaks. Two are at the top of the first ramp and two more at the top of the second. Though the real fun is that there are kobolds and some of them have slings. In the middle of the room, looking down on the entrance tunnel is a pair of kobolds, one with a sling. Then at the exit to the room are four more kobolds and two have slings.

Of course, by this point, every delver will know this if they look up anything about the dungeon before attempting it. Which not all of them do and Ally would rate a lack of knowledge as the leading cause of death before the first boss floor. Anyway, this group wasn’t stupid, and so their own ranged attackers managed to snipe those kobolds after they got a couple of shots in.

And they are on to the final proper room of the floor. They start off high in the air, as the previous room’s exit was at the top of all those ramps and the long rooms had been sloped upwards as well. With the delvers on a wooden platform that has spiral staircases downward to both sides.

In front of them is a moderately open area that looks across at an important feature of the dungeon, the importance of which most people don’t know. The limit breaker cliff. On top of which, there are a few trees, one lemon and four olive, though since they skipped the olive tree in the last room that likely isn’t on the delvers radar. What might get their attention is the herb nodes. Oh, and there’s a non-hostile cow for milking, if that’s your thing.

The team ignores said rewards and focuses on the heavily forested area to the left. There is a small rise? With a beehive preventing a direct path to the exit. Oh, and within the heavily forested area is another kobold camp. This one with two casters, five melee, and eight goats.

A tough challenge, even with the team managing to split off some of them to fight separately. Though such tactics only go so far as soon enough the kobolds are gathered together after losing a few of their camp.

From above, Doyle and Ally watch as this team faces their first real challenge on the floor. After all, knowing the monsters are there doesn’t mean the trees stop blocking you or that there are any fewer monsters to face.

Mind you, they still win the fight, but they aren’t going to go any deeper. A tank broke their arm awkwardly blocking a spell and two of the back line have, at the very least, heavy bruising to their sides. The goats had managed to get a charge on the team from the side.

Though now that the room is clear of hostile monsters, the team no longer ignores the cliff. Except they cheat at it. Well, it is allowed, but if you do anything besides climb the cliff, you don’t experience it extending ever upward, forcing you past your limits to finish the climb.

That clearly isn’t what this team is here for, so fair enough. Instead, their roguish fellow climbs up one of the trees next to the cliff. Then from up there, they take out a rope with a rough grapple and after a few tries; they get it hooked on something.

And since using a rope isn’t climbing the cliff directly, the rogue can get to the top of the cliff and tie the rope somewhere secure. From there, those who aren’t injured all climb up and begin harvesting a selection of the herbs and picking all the lemons.

At this point, Doyle and Ally turn away and focus on the base instance of the floor.

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I can’t believe I went through all the effort to make this many trees on only the second floor!’

Ally shrugs, ‘It just feels odd now because you can replace them with actual trees in moments if you don’t care too much about getting things exact.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Yeah, even so, for me to have gone so long without trees is a bit silly.’

Ally nods, ‘Just a side effect of the crafting process and how early you were found. I mean seriously! You had barely opened the second portal and an acorn fell right in. If your dungeon portal had been unguarded for even just a month, you likely would have gotten something.

‘Instead, all the nonsense happened, and suddenly there was a town being built up around you. There is a reason the system placed you outside of a pre-existing settlement. The same setup for the dungeon across from us has basically allowed that dungeon’s entrance to be mostly open. The two nearby settlements are fighting over access.’

A Little Work, A Little Fun - Chapter 477

Third Floor Skip - Chapter 479