[D'sP] The Final Push - Chapter 439

Ruby looks around, “So, I carried hard on the first lake and that’s fine. Part of the mage’s job is to clear out the hordes. But that?” And she points at the hundred plus gathering of kobolds around the lake. “We need more than just me.”

Jim frowns, “We didn’t really prepare for a horde fight. Susan, what are our chances of being able to hit and fade?”

Susan shrugs, “We’d have to clear out the traps around the lake so we aren’t restricted on the direction we attack from. Though they seem to have fewer traps near the lake, anyway. I guess even dungeon monsters have a limit of how much frustration they’re willing to deal with.”

Jim frowns, but after considering things, sighs. “Do it.”

This took half a day to complete. Not because of the traps, mind you. Rather, being so close to the lake meant near constant fights. Though, if anything, the fighting helped reduce how many kobolds they’d be fighting at the lake.

By the time they were ready? The kobolds around the lake were riled up and still around 150 strong. Jim was fine with this outcome, though adjusted his estimates for how long the rest of the floor would take again.

He turns to the party, “Anyone got a wave clear ability they’ve been hiding? I don’t want to be here for a full week. I’ve been saving something in my back pocket that might work, but it isn’t quite ‘wind blade barrage’ levels of effective.”

Doctor shrugs, “If you wanted me to heal the entire kobold camp? I could swing a low level, wide area heal. And we don’t really want me wasting Mana on single target attack spells.”

Jay, “Me? I’ve been working on my Qi, sure, but that’s mostly body and gear enhancement. I think that if there was enchanted gear, I’d be able to get more out of it, especially if it was enchanted using Qi.”

Doctor, “Would it be called enchanted if it was done with Qi? As far as I’ve heard, enchanting tends to be a Magic specific sort of thing.”

Jim scoffs, “Oh sure, there’s probably some sort of official designation for them all. Screw that noise, though. They’re all just enchanted gear. I’ll make an exception for stuff done by way of runes, if only because formations and such don’t seem to inherently change the object, just add an effect on top. Anyway, Jeremy, you got something?”

Jeremy makes a sour face, “Technically I have something on me. Though it’s expensive and single use.”

Jim leveled a phase at him. “You got a wide area poison of some sort?”

Jeremy, “We, we have a wide area poison of some sort.”

Susan nods, “And it is very specifically the both of us. No way we would trust something like a grenade with poison in it. That breaks and you’re screwed. We have a two-part poison gas. Also, saying it is expensive and single use is underselling it.”

Jeremy, “Yeah, I don’t know if our entire community has enough supplies to make more than three doses.”

Susan, “Including the one we already made.”

Jim, “Did you develop magical mustard gas?!”

Jeremy waves his hands, “No! We don’t have nearly the resources to figure something like that out.”

Susan nods, “Yeah, this is more like chlorine gas. It isn’t, we haven’t found a source of bleach. Also, more on the side of organic poison than chemical poison. Though good news!

“Chemical poisons and stuff like nerve gasses won’t be as devastating anymore! Err, they’ll still be horrible for kids and those who are low level. Can’t help physics.

“But! When you stop being as dependent on normal physics, poison becomes more about the poison intent. So, those nasty poisons that pre-system the human body couldn’t handle or build a resistance to? Even when enhanced with magic, they don’t get that back.”

Jim squints, “Pretty certain we already knew stuff like lead wasn’t going to be as bad of a threat.”

Jeremy shakes his head, “No, lead is still bad. Pre-magic lead isn’t a threat. Once you get lead with magic, it’ll be a problem again. Rather, this is about the poisonous nature of them. Magic saturated lead will not be able to skip poison resistance. That’s the big thing. You can be resistant to poisons that used to just skip resistance.

“Anyway, we’re not using our emergency option.”

Jim sighs, “Fine, give me a second, I’m going to finish up a Path.”

Jim takes a few moments to mess with his status. “Okay, let’s go for our first pass. This should work.”

Now ready, the group comes at the lake from the left. Of course, the kobolds detect the magic build up from Ruby’s barrage spell. Except this time they ran right into another sort of barrage. A rain of transparent, blue tinged arrows fall upon the charging horde.

The kobolds stumble and slow down. It wasn’t by much, but just enough that Ruby’s spell finished and began its carnage. All while Jay and the Barrais held the line for the few kobolds that managed to pull ahead before the arrow barrage.

The melee clears up those few and then focus purely on defending against the magic that was soon to come. Except they don’t have to defend for long. With about fifty kobolds dead, the party fades back into the forest and make a hasty retreat.

It takes a bit to lose the kobolds, but eventually the team stops and catches their breath.

Doctor makes a quick pass around the group, “Welp, we all seem fine, if a little winded. Which despite having been a doctor, kind of shocks me. Guess I’ve gotten to used to having stats. Though maybe it just means I need to update my exercise routine. If I can still tire, that means my workout isn’t doing enough.”

Susan nods, “Same for us. I hadn’t actually believed we had limitless stamina, but I figured it would be too hard to drain it in the short term.”

Jeremy, “Well, good to know. Now just to repeat this a few more times.”

And by a few more times, he actually means two more for this lake. Then a repeat of their trap clearing around the next two lakes and then four rounds of hit and run at each. That all led up to them facing the final lake.

Jim stares up at the cliff. “Well, I don’t think we have to climb that wall.”

Ruby nods, “It’s like the limit breaker wall. Though I’m sure you all feel it already. Not only is it like, but we won’t get anything from completing this one.”

Susan, “That cliff is also where the ore is coming from. Our scouting found a number of caves showing signs of recent mining. Except the mithril is, yeah.”

Jim sighs, “Back in that cutout of the cliff. I bet the exit to the floor is behind the waterfall as well.”

Ruby, “Hundreds of kobolds and it doesn’t feel like we’ll have as much luck on the hit and run.”

Jim, “Maybe climbing the wall wouldn’t be the worst idea? If we don’t bother with the challenge and go straight to cheating it we’d have a pretty commanding position to rain fire down on them.”

Susan shakes her head, “They’ve got caves for days to hide in and those caves are where we inevitably need to go.”

Jim sighs again, “Yeah, I know. So, how many do you think we can clear out?”

Susan shrugs, “A hundred? Still leaves a few hundred at the lake encampment, but at least the mines will be cleared. And next time? I bet we can skip the other lakes if we’re careful. It just leaves us open to enemies coming in behind us.”

Jim nods, “Well, we all know the drill. It has been days of this at this point and I want out of here. Or at least off this floor. The sky looks perfect, but it feels wrong.”

The party moves out and begins to strike at each of the depleted mines. There are enough mines that the overall quantity of kobolds isn’t that high in each. And only having to fight low double digits of kobolds? Even if it is in a tight space? No challenge, especially since they didn’t put traps in the mines.

After that they were back in front of the final lake, and Jim is frowning. “I knew there was too few kobolds in the mines. There’s maybe forty or fifty more kobolds than we expected.”

Jay shrugs, “Not like we’re turning back at this point.”

The others cringe.

Doctor shakes his head, “That kind of talk is why Bill died. Though I can’t deny that I do not want to turn back either. This location just sucks!”

Jeremy nods, “If the lake was set even further back into the cliff, that would be one thing! Instead, the lake is half in, which means there isn’t really a bottleneck to make use of. Yet at the same time we can’t approach from any angle and so harass them like the previous lakes.”

Jim sighs, “We’ll just have to go slow.”

And they did. Jim’s rain of arrows skill was draining, making it more of a once a battle sort of thing. It wouldn’t honestly be all that effective except for one key detail. It was psionic and the kobolds don’t have anyone able to detect it. So, unlike with Ruby’s wind blade barrage, the kobolds weren’t able to prepare for it.

This formed the core of the team’s ongoing effort to clear the last lake. They would sneak up on the lake and Jim would release a barrage. Now, the rain of arrows wasn’t actually the primary killer.

After the first couple of barrages, the kobolds at least learned how to react to the arrows raining down. Though in reacting to the obvious threat, that left them open to the rest of the party. In particular, since Ruby wasn’t channeling her barrage, this left her open to cast out fire ribbons.

300, 280, 265, 255, 240, 220, 200, and so on as the number of kobolds slowly dropped. Each attack only killing ten to twenty kobolds, but it was consistent. Not just that, but the kobolds didn’t seem to have a counter besides more aggressive patrols, which only meant the party had more targets.

The only thing of note is that none of the elders were dying. They could survive the arrow barrage and handle the following attacks. So inevitably, Jim’s party was left with the 30 elder kobolds to fight and their quick attacks weren’t working anymore.

Jay led the charge, flanked by the Barrais. Arrows flew out from behind them, but Ruby held back. There weren’t that many mages in this group of elders, but their spells had proven challenging enough and so she was focusing on countering enemy spells.

This proved to be a good plan as the ground under Jay rumbles, only for Ruby’s magic calm things, preventing a field of stone spikes from popping up. It seems that while few in number, the elder kobold mages were all using earth magic. Though stopping this one joint attack strained Ruby, her face red from exertion. 

Jim noticed this, “I’m going to focus on taking out the mages!”

Ruby nods, “If they seem to synchronize their movements, fire right away to disrupt them! I can’t handle a spell cast by them truly working together instead of just at the same time.”

Up front, the first melee elder falls to Susan. It thought itself clever, trying to sneak up behind her to attack. Of course, she knew it was there the entire time and when it overextended in the hope of taking her out? Well, it wasn’t anything much for her to counter attack it.

Of course, this wasn’t without consequences. She took a sword to the arm. Her armor standing up to it, but leather can only do so much. Though within moments her arm glowed green under the armor for a moment, Doctor doing his job.

From there, the fight dragged on. The elder kobolds managing to surround the party with the three melees forming a triangle around the other three. It was simply impossible to keep this from happening against so many enemies while out in the open.

Still, they held on as fatigue started to take hold. Each wound, even if healed, taking its toll. Yet it wasn’t one sided. In fact, none of them doubted themselves.

Every wound being taken purposefully, always traded for something more than worth it. Then there was 20 kobolds left when the first enemy mage fell.

Ruby had kept them on their toes, and Jim finally found his opening. Later on, they would point to this as the true turning point. As from there, the mages were less and less capable of defending themselves against Jim. Then, once the mages were dead, Ruby turned her magical might on the melee elders.

In the end, the team of six were left standing at the center of a bunch of glowing loot drops. By this point, every one of them has accumulated small wounds. Not that Doctor was out, but he had held back and was only healing the big wounds.

Jim looks around, “So, do we rest or advance?

“Hah, yeah right. Anyway, loot the loot. Ruby gets priority on those back there. Then we retreat to our last camp until we’re fully healed. No telling what is in those caves.”

And so they do. Then bright and early, at least going by the ceiling, they approach the last lake. The mithril mine was found, dry of mithril of course and the tunnel hidden behind the waterfall came into view.

Jim squints, “This should be it. I doubt this is a boss floor. Still, careful!”

The party advances into the tunnel, heads on a swivel. Except there’s nothing to see. The tunnel goes straight and lets out into a big room with a familiar glow.

Still careful, but with more pep in their step, the team advances into this last room only to find their delve was over. It was the core room!

Jim squints, “Huh, I think the cores bigger?”

Jeremy shrugs, “By a little.”

Jim nods, “Fair enough, been a while since we last saw it.”

No Turning Back - Chapter 438

Chatter And Plans - Chapter 440