Chapter 35: Chapter 29 – The Bloodstained Arena

Jake’s party was deposited into the center of a giant arena. He could see that the stands were filled with fantasy races, though ones that in most stories were categorically evil. Goblins, orcs, ogres, and Jake thought he identified some dark elves. He wondered what race the dungeon master might be, as while it was almost always an evil race like the aforementioned, there was a chance that it wasn’t.

There were 20 meter high walls, and the ceiling of the area they were fighting inside was caged in to where the girls could not just fly out and leave. The arena was circular, and there were what appeared to be four entrances in the cardinal directions, with pillars at eight points around the outside that were large enough to completely hide behind. The audience was noisy, and just when Jake wondered when the event would start, all four gates opened, and one large creature came out of each one: some kind of sabretooth tiger. They were buzzing with electricity. The gates slammed shut as soon as they finished exiting.

Jake decided to start the fight with his staple this dungeon run: buffing the demoness with mini-Einherjar. Ophelia then started launching ice spears at one of the tigers, but they swiftly dodged the attack. Jake went for the one who had just dodged, and was able to strike it with a large ice spear as it landed. He and Ophelia were able to bash their shields into another tiger each, while the demoness tried to rain blows against her opponent. She was getting shocked with each hit, the electricity feeding back into her. Jake casted a [Cure Wounds] on her, allowing her to continue her assault, and Ophelia cast ice spears at her sabretooth from point blank range in between blocking and thrusting her spear, causing wounds to build up on her target.

The third sabretooth that Jake had managed to strike with a spear of ice was now a part of their frantic melee with buzzing tigers, and Jake and Ophelia were having a difficult time of defending. Eventually, one of the tigers managed to flank Jake and rake its buzzing claw across his back, both causing him to bleed and shocking him. Once again, the valkyrie shouted in pain as Jake’s [Valkyrie’s Chosen] ability activated, and it both reduced the severity of the wound he took but shared the damage with Ophelia. It took him down to a knee in pain, but he kept his shield and spear in position, leading him to roll near the valkyrie. Overall, while the attack hurt, the claw did not go very deep or hit anything vital; he could continue fighting. 

The demoness managed to down her tiger first, and she activated her new cloak’s Alpha Howl ability. A red energy covered Jake and Ophelia, and the demoness blurred into motion, slamming into one of the tigers. This gave Ophelia and Jake much more breathing room, allowing Jake to get off a [Cure Wounds] spell, and Ophelia managed to cast a healing runes spell on Jake, topping him off. He sent his appreciation over their bond, but he could tell that she was worried that he took the blow in the first place.

After that point they were able to land some more ice spears and take down the tigers without taking any more wounds. Once the creatures were dead, they set about healing themselves and looting the corpses. They wanted to recuperate and Fhesiah to absorb the kill energy, but after about two minutes after the tigers died, the gates opened once again. This time, a veritable army exited, several creatures from each of the same creatures in the stands from each gate, except for one, where it seemed no creature that Jake could see exited: goblins, ogres, and orcs.

Jake was preparing to cast a cone-shaped spell to hit a large number of them from at least one direction when Jake felt alarm from the demoness and she shouted “Jake! Behind you!” This was from the direction in which there were no enemies coming, so Jake acted quickly, guessing that these enemies had some form of invisibility. He used his [Force Push] ability, sending a cone of telekinetic force in that direction, and was shocked when a dark elf appeared only a meter away: just as they were sent flying.

Two others appeared as they stumbled backwards as a result of the spell, and the demoness took to task charging them and taking them down. Jake had kept his [Arcane Eye] summoned, and was happy to see that it allowed him to see that there was actually one more invisible figure. He wasn’t sure if the dungeon master could see this creature or not, so he directed the demoness to “discover” the final one over his bond.

Jake used the time of the approaching army wisely and cast a spell he had prepared while practicing [Runic Magic]. His team was greatly lacking in control, so he had come up with a few options for this. With only twelve runes he was limited, but he still managed a small control spell that should help quite a bit here. He lined up the runes and cast his spell in a circle all around his party: [Runic Magic: Field of Ice].

A thin layer of ice expanded in a circle out from his party, covering the ground and causing the approaching orcs, goblins, and ogres to slip and be unable to find their footing. It started at 5 meters from where his party was fighting and extended until it reached about 20 meters. This slowed their approach greatly, allowing his party to take on fewer enemies at a time.

Jake sent some [Mana Bolts] at the dark elves that had snuck on them, of which he was able to spam a large number of them to hit the visible dark elves' almost unprotected bodies. They were wearing some kind of cloth, probably something that enhanced their stealth capabilities, and the [Mana Bolts] ravaged their bodies, cutting and scraping their skin with blood in each direction. Jake returned to the charging group of goblins, leaving the demoness to her work against the dark elves, and released a [Runic Magic: Forked Lightning] in their direction. Ophelia mirrored this but against the area of orcs that were slightly slower to arrive than the group of goblins.

Many of the goblins died, but some of them otherwise resisted the damage in some way. Jake wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it before, perhaps the volume of everything else going on, but a goblin had started beating on some drum in the rear, and it provided some kind of protection or added some level of fervor to the goblins. Jake sent a spear of ice their way as he formed up with Ophelia, but the crazed goblin drummer smashed both of their sticks on the drum harshly to make a loud beat, and it rejected the spear and shattered it, as well as some of the field of ice in front of them. Still, there were not many goblins left, so Jake and Ophelia fighting side by side worked on them.

Jake noticed none of the orcs had gotten taken down by Ophelia’s lightning, guessing that they were simply stronger and with more health. Jake settled into their formation fighting with the valkyrie, and he used his spear’s enchantment to add in deadly spears of ice in between thrusts or blocks with ease. Between the two of them, despite being outnumbered, they made it feel like they were in charge of the way the fight happened, especially thanks to the field of ice.

They would knock enemies around into one another, leave an opening for enemies to try to take advantage of only for it to be protected by the other, and otherwise break into the enemy’s formation. Jake even managed to snipe that annoying drummer with a spear of ice between two goblins. This allowed them to take the remaining goblins and orcs down quicker than they could gather around and flank the two of them, despite them being greatly outnumbered. Eventually, the demoness finished her work against the four dark elves and joined them, just as some large ogres arrived.

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They had finally just smashed the ice to get through. There were four of them, and they were quite large at over three meters tall. They had large clubs with wicked spikes driven through the ends. Jake decided that he would use one of his larger spells, one that he could only cast thanks to his spear to take out one of the ogres immediately, and possibly damage one of the other ones.

He picked the two that were closest, and launched an absolutely massive spear of ice at them. This spear exudes frost so cold that even him completely covered in clothes and warmed by the flames of Hestia actually felt like he himself might freeze. It was also about one quarter the size of the giant ogre, so when it smashed into the ogre moving as fast as a crossbow bolt, it bowled them over and directly into the other ogre as they were both being covered in ice. Whether either of them died from the empowered spell, they would not be joining the fight until their fight with the other two were well under way.

Jake was very satisfied with the effect of his fifteen-rune spell, as he joined the demoness and valkyrie in their assault on the remaining two ogres. Their clubs were quite heavy and full of momentum, but it was easy to break their rhythm with the valkyrie and Jake using their dampening shields to remove over half the bite from their attacks; this was in addition to proper shield work, angling and deflecting their blows to not hit them straight on. They darted in and attacked their legs, and cast spears of ice until they could no longer stand. The valkyrie then used her wings to fly into the air and dive down and drive a spear strike into one of their skulls, and Jake cast an empowered strength rune on himself to finish off the other one in a similar fashion.

The other ogres were stuck together, and could not seem to get up, covered in frost. The ogre that the spear of ice pierced through was now dead, but the other one was just impotently trying to get up, various pieces of them frozen to the ground and to the other ogre. They put that other ogre down easily. They set about to recover, as the demoness had received some minor wounds from the dark elves and Jake and Ophelia had gotten several cuts and bruises through taking hits on their armor as well.

Jake used [Cure Wounds] and Ophelia her runic healing, bringing everyone back up to full health. Jake felt his resources after casting all of those spells during the long fight were actually holding quite strong. He could cast a few spells before he would be forced to decide whether he would actually end up using a rod or not, but he wanted to save the rod for the fourth or fifth floor when it would be revealed. Jake didn’t think it was easy to counter the rods in a meaningful way, but knowing of their existence could make a dungeon master push for a battle of attrition rather than an individually more powerful or defensive enemy.

They were given five minutes to recover this time, and that brought Jake’s stores back up over seventy percent or so, as he was able to push his [Mana Siphon]. The demoness had absorbed a portion of her heavenly energy crystal, and the valkyrie barely had a chance to cast many spells, so she was almost as well off as Jake. The gate opened, and out came what looked like some kind of frost wyvern. It appeared the dungeon master was not done baiting Jake.

The wyvern dashed fast across the arena from where it entered, and Jake cast mini-Einherjar once again: but on the valkyrie, this time. She blurred into motion, activating her [Charge] ability, and met the wyvern’s swipe of its wing-claw with her shield. She looked tiny with the wyvern being the size of a small bus, but it was the smaller battle angel that deflected the claw, and not the other way around. Jake cast the same spell on the demoness, and she danced around slicing the wyvern’s wings and legs as she pleased.

The valkyrie and the wyvern traded blocks with blows, and the empowered strength of the valkyrie was able to leave wounds on the wyvern as well. Just as Jake was thinking that this fight was going well, it reared back to likely use a breath attack. The valkyrie sped away towards Jake, and the demoness positioned herself behind a pillar, but Jake was caught wide in the open, the valkyrie not able to arrive in time to shield him. He cast a runic barrier in front of him as the breath attack hit it, the attack ongoing, and actually managed to retrieve the Shield of Ice from the previous floor reward from his storage bracelet to get behind before it shattered. The valkyrie had was ready to cast a runic barrier to replace the shattering one, but stopped her efforts when she saw his plan to use the shield of ice.

The breath attack hit the Shield of Ice ineffectually, and the valkyrie and demoness immediately punished the wyvern for its attack. Their empowered strength created cuts deep into the creature, leaving it littered with deep wounds in just moments. The valkyrie added some lightning attacks in between stabs, and Jake also hit it with an empowered lightning strike, frying it through its wounds. It succumbed to its wounds before the mini-Einherjar spells wore off, the third floor of the dungeon completed.

 

 

Once again, they had won. Jake was quite happy with their performance throughout the fight. While the valkyrie was quite worried about Jake with that last frost breath, Jake could have managed even without the shield. He just thought it was better than casting more runic barriers, as if the breath attack continued for a long time, eventually he would be in a tight spot.

This was the second time that the demoness used her superior cultivator senses to help save the day, Jake not wanting to think about what would have happened had the dark elves managed to stab him in the back with their grisly looking daggers. Once they were removed from stealth or their invisibility, they did not seem more challenging than the orcs by very much, but their stealth strike could have nearly killed Jake. Jake would now put much more focus into using his [Arcane Eye], as it allowed him to see such creatures sneaking up on him. They settled in for looting and the demoness absorbing her kill energy. They were about to enter the end game.

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