Chapter 38: Someone Finally Gets Some Berries – Chapter 38

The small puff of fire barely warmed the monster’s vines, but that didn’t matter to the assassin vine. As far as it was concerned this was the end of the world and sent a good two-thirds of its vines in the direction the puff came from. Jack takes this as an invitation and takes a swing with his cement mace.

A solid thwack and many of the assassin vine’s tentacles are pulped. The monsters let out a gurgling noise and tried to pull back the vines it had sent out at the fire. Sammy will not give it a chance though and with a slice of her sword lops off even more vines. This reveals the assassin’s core body for the first time and Jack’s reaction described it the best, “the hell, that’s a watermelon someone stuck too many stems on!”

This doesn’t stop him from attacking again though and the group finds out it smashes like a watermelon as well. Though the insides are more green than red. This finishes the main fight but behind it another has just begun.

The Barrais had gotten into position around the kobolds but they kept back watching the main fight. When it is clear how that fight will go, they attack. The others aren’t watching and the couple knows it.

Not holding back, the two surge forward in silence. The kobolds don’t even get the chance to make a noise before the Barrais cover their mouths. This is soon followed by both kobolds being forever silenced when the Barrai’s daggers make a smooth glide motion across their respective prey’s throats.

In the dungeon’s core room Ally claps and laughs, ‘who would think we would have real assassins in the dungeon this early. Maybe we jinxed it by having assassin vines?’ And she slaps the core.

Back in the vine room the others don’t even get to come down from the fight. Now that there aren’t any visible threats, Susan is on the assassin vine corpse and Jeremy is bemoaning how they should have kept it alive. As he put it, “they aren’t that dangerous once you remove the vines.”

On a time limit there is no delicacy in Susan’s actions. She doesn’t even bother taking out a more appropriate tool, using her dagger instead to hack the body apart. All the while she mutters to herself.

“Look at these structures here! I bet the vines move by hydraulics. But how would that work? Jeremy, you chop them apart and figure it out. Now what is over here? It looks like a brain analogue.” Then before she can continue the corpse fades away. She was a bit angry.

It took a while before Ruby was able to calm her down. The words she said and in so many languages! The others all expected that if the dungeon walls had been painted they would have peeled. All that brought her down was the assurance another would be here later for her to play with. Though for some reason none of them, not even her husband, was willing to promise to come back with her to the dungeon.

That taken care of, they continued onto the series of goat rooms. In the first room Sammy rolls her eyes, “wooo, three goats instead of two. Quite the change here.”

Jack smacks the back of her head, “You want more change? Why not complain that the kobolds dropped rabbit meat? How does that make any sense? Honestly, if nothing else changed besides maybe more herbs like the aloe, I would be fine.”

Susan perks up, “wait, right, the aloe! Just a second please.” And she rushes back into the vine room, leaving the group fighting the goats. Her husband can only sigh. The fight wasn’t hard, so no one said anything.

Two more aloe plants harvested and the rest of the normal goats taken care of the group is at the entrance to the large goat room. Jack smirks at Sammy, “it added another goat! This one even comes with a hat. How do you feel about it now?”

She just rolls her eyes, “more meat for the larder.”

Banter over, they line up just outside of the room. Melee in front, the Barrais next, and the magic users in back. As they stroll into the room, two of the six goats charge them right away.  Sammy and Jack move further into the room, intercepting them as the Barrais move out to flank them.

In the back Ruby sends out a ribbon of fire to keep the remaining goats back. Doctor fires off a minor heal at Jack as the goat’s helmet allowed it to tank the glancing hit of the mace. Head lowered, it ducked under his guard to lay the hurt on his gut.

Ruby’s fire ribbon sears a line in the ground and catches one of the rear goats on the leg setting it on fire. It doesn’t have long to worry about that though as Jeremy puts it out of its misery on his way by. The next goat in line who had reared back from the fire in time wasn’t as easy to take down.

Helmet lowered the bronze-covered horns raise a screech as they ward off a dagger and another goat slams into his side. Jeremy goes with the blow and turns his fall into a roll away from the monsters.

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Back with the others, Jack gets his revenge as his mace slams down on the goat in front of him. This once again leads to him being hit by the next goat in line. This attack actually draws blood, though more as an accident. Its head glances past Jack’s body and when it pulled back the horns left a bloody scratch.

This led to a lot of cursing and a mace being swung around a tad more haphazardly than the others would prefer. It does take out another two goats though and ending the fight as Susan has mopped up the back line and Sammy finished off hers. Another couple of heals from Doctor to patch up Jeremy and Jack before they are ready to move on.

That is they would be if it wasn’t for the two sage bushes in the room. The Barrais both take one and harvests them. However their attention is soon drawn away, Jeremy even fails to harvest one of the possible drops. This is because over in the next room Jack stumbled upon the fact that the bushes now had berries. Oh, and there are bees and honey, not that the Barrais care about that bit.

Finished the sage they move onto the berries with only minor heckling from Susan for Jeremy’s failure. Though they aren’t needed as the bushes are quite normal as evidence by Jack snarfing down some raspberries. Susan still does some tests on the bushes but the results are all normal. Well, as normal as any dungeon plants. While the berries seem to lack the normal chance of failure when harvesting the rest of the plant isn’t so protected. Jack is actually taking advantage of it as he can just grab handfuls of the berries and the stems just disappear before they reach his mouth.

Ruby is off to the side shaking her head. “Weren’t you worried at all about poison?”

Jack looks up with berry juice staining his mouth and does a slow blink then looks back down at the bush. “Ah, well, hmm.” He grabs another bunch of berries and munches them down. “I gave my last raspberries for the bag we left here. Never had any vices. Didn’t smoke or drink. Hell, I stopped drinking soda when my dad ended up developing diabetes and then caffeine in general.”

“Berries though, where a hobby of mine. Never made a lot of money at my regular job, but I devoted most of my house to a series of greenhouses just to grow them. Cost me a pretty penny but I eventually made it back as I technically raised them organically and my setup kept me in berries all year round. You could say I am a bit addicted to them. These are the same cultivar as the ones I gave up so I sort of just assumed it was safe?”

Ruby rubs her eyes but Doctor speaks up in his defense. “I bet these bushes are here for the kobolds so I doubt it would poison them.” He turns to Jack with a raised eyebrow, “though it was stupid since you didn’t think about that. However I do have a simple detox spell in my repertoire. Any serious poison would be beyond me, but I don’t think the dungeon is to the point of being able to make such a thing yet. Basically, the berries are fine but don’t eat any strange mushrooms you find. Now what do we do about that honey over there?”

Ruby sighs, “eugh, whatever. Jack, actually all of you, I better not hear about any founder or central figure of our budding community getting poisoned from something so stupid. As for the honey, we can’t do much with it right now. Any group in the future who plans to come this far should carry some jars with them. Now we have to deal with the next room and I am sure they know we are coming.”

Jeremy shrugs, “It’s a dungeon. Our very presence crossing the portal might have alerted them to us. Let me go look around the corner to see what there is to see.” When everyone agrees with this he pulls out a small makeup mirror and uses it to look into the next room.

“Huh”, Jeremy scratches his head, “Well I can report there is another goat in the room. Also, there is, well.” He glances at Ruby, “can you restrain my wife for a moment, please?”

Ruby shrugs at this but has to act fast as Susan almost rushes past her. Once she is restrained Jeremy nods, “good. I don’t think she would survive rushing in there. Anyway, there is a nice olive tree in the back corner that is currently fruiting.”

Doctor claps, “Yes! Wonderful! Cooking oil, magic circles, and all other sorts of things are within our grasp. Though one tree won’t produce that much. We can only hope it is more like the berry bushes so we can get a large harvest every time a group makes it here. Not that many can do this at the moment but give it time.”

Ruby rolls her eyes, “we have to kill the kobolds first and they have mages just like us. Anyway, same formation as the last room but I want the two of you.” And she points at the Barrais, “to stick closer to the group this time. Doctor is a good healer but he can’t do it from across the room. Now everyone, get ready. With all the side stuff that has happened we have been here for a long while. Though this time I want Sammy first and only then followed by Jack.” Jack shrugs.

Sammy slaps him on the shoulder as she goes past him and enters the next room with her shield raised high. A good idea as she catches an ice shard with it right away. She rushes forward and swings low, catching the charging goat on the legs, bringing it low.

Behind her Jack comes along and finishes the goat off before dodging back behind her as another bolt of ice shoots towards them. At this point the Barrais quietly moves along the right wall as the three melee kobolds move forward. The one with a shield moved up to face Sammy while the two without head towards the couple as they had been deemed a threat to their casters.

Ruby sends off a couple of fire ribbons towards those two but is soon distracted by said casters. One of them was firing off a heal towards the shield kobold while the other decided ice could beat fire and sent their next bolt towards her.