Chapter 20: Chapter 20: Pursuit and Discovery

Deep within an unmapped and unexplored stretch of the mountain range near Graff’s Quarry, past a vast swathe of ravaged tunnels, two incredibly small players were desperately trying to outrun a massive, bloodthirsty golem several leagues above them in both levels and physical size.

Or, rather, one player was trying to outrun them still.

The significantly more fluffy of the duo had pulled massively ahead already, though remained blissfully unaware of that fact as they left her in the dust.

Prim strained her sore legs as she pushed her minuscule little 14 AGI for all it was worth, barely keeping a few feet ahead of the living avalanche behind her.

“M-Monica…! Don’t leave meeeeeeeeee…!!”

Sadly, not even her pleas for help were fast enough to reach the max speed kitsune, watching helplessly as she blinked away into the distance, oblivious to her own speed again, stranding the halfling alone with her problems.

The crafter racked her brain furiously as she sprinted, her options currently distressingly limited as she hastily flipped through menus.

Unlike some people she knew, Prim was decidedly not some kind of strange nightmare build that could handle everything. Currently, she wasn’t much more than an underpowered and underleveled Berserker.

Rending Blow and Stoneshatter both probably could have burned through the enemy’s HP faster than they could retaliate and take her out, her skillset actually remarkably well-tuned for this exact type of foe.

Unfortunately their earlier overeager farming had left her without a single point of mana left to spend on her on either of those skills.

She didn’t have MP potions either, not that she could have made time to drink one.

...But, maybe she could do something without MP or skills.

Making sure to keep one eye on the tunnel ahead as she ran, an already physically taxed Prim rapidly flicked through menus with a practiced hand, knowing exactly what she was looking for.

A few moments of desperate menuing later, she’d finally gotten her inventory open once more. Pages and pages and pages of it were full to the brim of seemingly garbage materials they’d gathered on their trip here, having to read through the resources she had on hand as she ran.

Normal rocks, shiny ore, glittering crystals, and other items scrolled past rapidly as she dug deeper, looking for anything that could be useful here.

Her eyes eventually caught something, frantically scrolling back up as she passed it by the first time.

[Flamedust]

Perfect.

She pulled handfuls of it from her inventory, frantically mashing it together with anything else she had on hand, leaning entirely on her crafting resources to save her.

Everything she had access to got mixed together with the coarse powder, trying out every possible combination, running down the list desperately.

A trail of failed tests fell behind her as she worked away at it, being uselessly kicked aside by her closing-in pursuer as it growled and snapped right behind her, keeping right on her heels.

Salve Herbs made HP regeneration potions, Mushmoons made temporary attack boosts, each discovery something she would have normally been incredibly excited to note down for later had she not been currently a bit indisposed.

Right as it felt as if she had no options left, pushing the Flamedust in together with another of the nondescript kinds of stone they’d gathered, her eyes lit up as exactly what she’d been hoping for appeared in her hands.

[Blast Charge]

She didn’t even bother checking anything else on the new item, grabbing it with both hands and lobbing it behind her.

The boulderhound charged blindly into the projectile headed towards the, meeting it facefirst, the impacts setting the handmade bomb off instantly as the thick smoke engulfed it.

“It worked...! Thank g- seriously?!”

Her relief was cut cruelly short, the massive entity bursting out from the cloud of smoke and dust unperturbed, their HP only having been dented enough to enrage them further.

But it had done something.

Which meant she just needed more.

Digging out the same materials again, she quickly threw together another Blast Charge, bouncing it her hands a few times. If this didn’t do enough, then…

She piled more of her ample supply of Flamedust into the makeshift explosive, and excitingly, the bomb eagerly ate it up, growing noticeably in size.

But she had plenty of it left still. So why should she start conserving now?

More and more of the explosive powder was poured in, running forward purely on muscle memory at this point as her bomb grew and grew and grew, quickly scaling larger than the halfling herself as entire stacks of Flamedust were shoveled into it, ballooning exponentially as she hefted it along.

At a certain point it was more catharsis than actual need. But the crafter in her was smiling like a kid with a new toy, refusing to stop now.

By the time she emptied a fourth full stack of explosives into the bomb, she could feel her legs starting to give out under her, knowing she had to be satisfied with her bomb that was only half the width of the tunnel itself.

Every single point of her over one hundred STR went into her stiff arms as she tossed it full force behind her, only vaguely considering she’d maybe overdone it just a little.

“Taaaaaaake this…!!”

The overloaded wad of volatile material impacted the unsuspecting boulderhound at full force, hard enough to knock them backwards purely from her own strength behind the toss.

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A moment after initial impact, the bomb detonated, and the dark cave went white.

The blast was completely deafening at this range, and the area of the tunnel where the boulderhound had stood milliseconds before was now little more than a smoldering crater. The heat felt like she was being boiled alive in her clothes, and the debris peppered her back like buckshot.

More importantly than the rest however was the force of the explosion itself, the tunnel caving in from it as Prim herself was launched forward at speeds that would make even Monica struggle to keep up, laughing like a madwoman as she flew.

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Twitch, twitch.

“G-Good morning...”

Somehow, miraculously, the crafter was decidedly not dead by the time she finally regained consciousness, rubbing her eyes groggily.

“Oh, is that you Prim?”

“...Monica?”

“It is you, you finally caught up, great!”

She looked around for her party member, but the chamber they found themselves seemed decidedly devoid of anyone else.

“Where…?”

“Oh, er, up this ways!”

Looking up as she followed her voice, she finally located her and understood at once why she hadn’t noticed her earlier.

Currently, Monica found herself entire upper half lodged through a collapsed passageway, only her legs and tails poking out of the wall behind her, kicking around helplessly as she was stuck lying under piled rubble.

“I may have forgotten how fast I was, so I kinda just… crashed into the wall this way and it just sorta… broke, ehe…”

Most walls would have shattered when stuck at the speeds she had been moving at to be fair, so it had probably been the only way for her to properly brake without launching headfirst into solid stone and crushing herself like a tin can.

“You, uh… alright there?”

“Yeah, definitely, only down here because I feel like it, for sure.”

“Oh, don’t let me disturb you then, I’ll just go ahead and-”

“Just get me out of here already!!”

“Okay, okay!”

The stuck fox huffed, muffled under their rocky entombment.

Prim downed an MP potion finally, getting to work on gently excavating the other girl as she did her best not to crush her further under more collapsed rubble, slowly breaking up and removing then debris pinning her.

Eventually she managed to successfully mine out one significantly flattened Gloom Mage, helping her to her feet again as they both coughed up dust, chugging potions between them both before they could get cornered by yet enough overleveled threat.

“Guh, thank you… I only barely saw this path as I was running and didn’t quite make the turn in, but…”

Monica climbed through the newly cleared tunnel, signaling for Prim to follow.

Even with them both being plenty smaller than average, it was a tight squeeze to get through, crouching and crawling at some points just to wedge themselves through to the other side as they popped out into another chamber.

This room was the least natural of them all so far, several dim torches spread along the walls as the floor was clearly carved and flattened off by someone. Several other entrances to the room like the one they’d entered through were evenly spaced along the outer wall of the large room, but each one of them was completely caved in and unusable save for this one.

“Wow… pretty nice place, wonder if it used to be some sort of mine shaft?”

“Maybe? It is pretty out of place here, yeah. But that’s what I saw when I glanced in earlier, look!”

The two of them traced their gazes towards the opposite wall of the chamber, eyes widening as they saw it.

A massive, well worn door, set snugly against the stone and inlaid with intricate metalwork, ornate and regal in opposition to the unyielding expanse of unexciting rocks and ore that had decorated the rest of the mountain tunnels.

It was the second dungeon.

The pair bounced with excitement, their earlier exhaustion melting away as they’d made a discovery more massive than anything else they’d found so far on their expedition.

But excitement soon melted into shock before they could truly appreciate their find, as those massive twin doors in front of them creaked loudly, parting slowly as they opened without them doing anything at all.

Monica had been lucky enough to find one dungeon herself before anyone else, and had hoped one this remote would be the second she could take on before anyone else could challenge it.

But as the entrance opened wide, out stepped another unfamiliar player, words being engraved upon the stone already as they were marked off as the first player to ever clear the second dungeon.

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