System Architect - Ch 126

Mom looked disgusted by the dead monsters. Now that the fight was over, she faced away from their corpses in a purposeful manner.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“I can’t believe I just did that!” she exclaimed.

“They’re monsters, Mom. If we don’t kill them here and now, they’ll come knocking at our door.”

“I know. I know! But I’ve never killed something before. It feels wrong.”

“It’s alright, Princess,” Grandpa Joe said. “What your son says is correct. Do you need a break before we continue?”

Mom looked from the corpses to Grandpa Joe and then to me. She shook her head.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said.

We moved into the same formation with Grandpa Joe in the front, me to the left, and Mom to the right. The canyon remained narrow as we progressed. There were no branches. Instead, the canyon twisted all around. Groups of goblins would be around those blind corners.

After killing three more groups, I pulled up the message I had hidden. It was updating in real time as it showed we had to kill another 80 goblins. This took a lot more time than I had initially thought it would have. Though maybe I should have considered what dungeons could be like and brought refreshments beyond a bottle of water each.

“Let’s take a break,” Mom suggested after we’d gone through another two groups.

“Sure,” I said. “My mana’s starting to get low, so let’s take five.”

Grandpa Joe shrugged and sat down. I sat next to him and closed my eyes.

I remembered that sleeping worked to restore my mana, but that meditation was better. Focusing inside myself, I egged the mana on—willing it to circulate more. With each full circulation, a little bit was grabbed from the environment. I did not have the control—nor the skill—to drag more with each circulation. I wanted to try doing that, but I knew it would be better to leave that sort of experimentation for after the dungeon rather than during it. In the worse case scenario, I could knock myself out of the fight!

When the five minutes were up, I opened my eyes and stood up. Directing the mana had filled my reserves a smidge more than they would have otherwise been, but I was going to need to be careful with my mana if it stood a chance of lasting through the rest of the dungeon.

“Are you ready?” Grandpa Joe asked.

“I’m good,” I said.

“Five more minutes?” Mom asked.

He gave her a look.

“Fine, fine. Let’s go.”

Bend after bend, group after group, we continued. The killing became easier with each repetition. Each of us knew what to do. Instead of fighting a series of one-on-one engagements, we were working together.

“Group ahead!” Grandpa Joe yelled.

I moved to the front. With my shield out, I walked forward until the group saw me and charged. What I had learned when trying to conserve mana was to wait as long as I could before shooting off Arc. The stunned goblin would then be easy for Mom or I to kill since it was right there instead of somewhere else.

So when the goblins were almost within range, I loosed my bolt of electricity at the lead goblin. It jerked as the electricity coursed through its body. An added benefit to waiting as long as I could was that it disrupted any organization—no matter how poor—the goblins might have had. When the front goblin fell over, the others behind it had to move around to avoid it else trip over that goblin. In so doing, they were easier to bottle up and kill.

One goblin fell atop the lead goblin while the other three managed to avoid the pile—two going left and one going right. I stabbed downwards into both of the goblins without using the enchantment. The downside was that I did not have enough mana to keep using it while also being able to blast the first with Arc, so it went by the wayside. Still, the unenchanted spear was plenty sharp enough to end the lives of the two goblins. While I killed the two goblins, Mom handled hers without complaint. Two reports to my left signaled the end of the encounter.

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With 10 monsters left, there was a change in the endless canyon we’d been walking through. It straightened out. Then, it began to open up—first gradually, then quickly. The canyon became a large, circular area with only one entrance—the one we were walking through. Grandpa Joe brought us to a halt.

“I see a large group ahead,” he informed us.

I walked a little closer to see. He was right. Instead of the groups of five we’d been dealing with, there were ten goblins in the arena. One of them was larger than the others—the boss. I hadn’t explicitly set dungeons to work that way, but I also hadn’t nixed it, either. I figured it might be one of those audibles called by the deity rather than me. It knew what I was going for and also knew what humanity at large expected out of a dungeon.

“Let’s take a short break” I said. “I’m going to need as much mana as I can get for this encounter. Why don’t you two plan while I meditate?”

“Alright.”

I did my best to tune them out and focus on the mana inside of me. It was a very difficult thing to do. But over the next ten minutes, I regained enough mana that I felt confident in out ability to take on the goblins in our way.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked when I felt ready.

“We’re going to see if we can peel off some of the monsters instead of facing the whole group. If that fails, you’ll have to do your crowd control thing with the lightning. You have enough juice for all of that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I should be able to fire it off five or six times before I run out.”

“Good. The shotgun’ll get a lot of work, but that’s what it’s for. Let’s do this.”

We marched forward, fully prepared to aggro some of the monsters and run away. As soon as we entered the arena proper, the canyon behind us sealed shut. It was all at once or perish!

“No escape!” I called out.

“Prepare for Plan B!” Grandpa Joe shouted.

It only took a handful of steps past where the canyon had closed when all of the monsters noticed us. Unlike before, where they simply charged with no organization, the bigger goblin directed the other nine to come at us together. For me, that was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that I had many targets for my spells. The curse was that it was do or die.

I didn’t wait until they were upon us to begin breaking up their formation. I shot out four of the five Arcs towards where the largest concentrations of goblins were. Between the direct hits and the breaking of their formation, that knocked the number we had to face immediately from nine to two. Mom took care of one while Grandpa Joe blasted the other.

The seven remaining goblins disentangled themselves and resumed their charge. Unlike before, they were now much more disorganized. That have us precious seconds to kill one before another appeared in its place. As the last of the small goblins fell, I got a few notifications that I stuck in the corner until after the fight.

The only thing left, now, was the big one. Compared to the regular goblins we’d been fighting, this thing was twice the size. It had proper armor, too—leather—as well as a serious looking two-handed sword.

“It has armor,” I informed them. “I’m switching to using fire!”

It had only been a handful of seconds since the monsters charged. The big one had begun its charge not long after ordering the littler ones to attack us. I used the rest of my mana to launch a Fireball at the boss. It screamed in pain as the spell set its armor alight.

Grandpa Joe took advantage of the opening I’d created and unloaded the rest of his magazine into the goblin. Even with all the damage from the slugs, the thing still hadn’t gone down. Mom and I flanked it while he reloaded. We stabbed the monster through the flames until another notification popped up. This one, I read.

Congratulations on completing the dungeon! As the first people to complete the dungeon, you have been rewarded with 100 experience points that can be used towards your class, your profession, or any skill you currently possess. A portal will appear when you dismiss this message.

I didn’t think too long and applied the experience towards my profession. That much experience pushed me to level 2, which boosted my stats a little more. The added Spirit was nice as it was what governed my mana pool and its regeneration.

Then I pulled up the notifications I’d put to the side during the fight. The first let me know that I had raised Arc to level 2. The second proved my choice of taking Wizard over Spearman correct. I had gained the Spearmanship skill at level 1!

I looked at Mom and Grandpa Joe. They had that reading notifications look about them. I waited for them to finish before asking the all important question.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked.

“Yes!” Mom answered.

“What about the big guy’s sword?” Grandpa Joe asked. “Would it be worth something?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Might as well take it. Worst case, I’ll forge it into something else.”

He picked it up after shouldering his shotgun. We exited the portal to appear back on the flat section of cobblestone in front of the dungeon’s entrance portal. I looked up and saw that the time had been reset to just under five days.

“Hey!” called a voice from the bottom of the stairs.

I turned to look. It was a policeman standing by some cones with wooden poles sticking out of them. Police tape was stretched across. I waved to him, which only made his look even more sour than it already was.

Grandpa Joe stepped forward and Mom and I followed. We walked down the stairs to the policeman.

“What were you doing up there?” the policeman asked. “This area is off limits and dangerous!”

“We were clearing the dungeon,” Grandpa Joe said. “Like we learned about in the tutorial. You had that too, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know dungeons will burst if they aren’t cleared periodically. If you notice the thing at the top is now back to five days because we killed all the monsters inside.”

The policeman sighed and took out a notepad.

“Can you at least tell me what it was like in there?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s a narrow canyon with groups of five goblins every so often. Then the ending has a bigger group of ten, one of which is the boss.”

“Goblins… like the little mean things from those stories that got popular recently?”

“Yes.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“You’d want to go as a group since there are 100 goblins to kill,” Grandpa Joe added. “It takes a while, so bring water and a snack. I would guess it took the three of us about two hours.”

“Understood. Thanks. And sorry for having to kick you out. Orders from above, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re good for a few days at least. If it gets low, we can always come back and clear it later.”

We turned to leave before the officer stopped us with one last question.

“Where’d you get those weapons?” he asked.

“The spears are from the tutorial,” I lied. “The shotgun, too. The giant sword thingy was what the boss used.”

“I see. Well off you go.”

I waved to the officer after ducking under the police tape. I checked my phone to see that I’d missed several texts and calls from Dad. A quick text back letting him know we were on our way over was enough to satisfy him that we were ok.