Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Back into the Mines

Amazingly, the newly encumbered elf was able to keep up with her decidedly less armored colleagues without much issue, the dirt path stretching on and on and on ahead of them without end as the mountain range grew larger in the distance.

It hadn’t been that long since they’d last been down this route, but this time it felt less like being dragged out for a job, and more like something the trio were actually excited for. Monica’s thoughts roiled at how much she wanted a second try at it after a certain someone had left her with an unsatisfied vendetta, Prim daydreamed about what all treasure an abandoned old mind could be hiding for them, and Elise was simply happy to try and pay them both back for everything they’d done to help her over the last few days.

By the time they’d reached Graff’s Quarry for the second time, it was just past noon, the sun beating down on them overhead as they panted in the heat.

“I, uh… didn’t remember it being this far when you dragged me out here last time.”

“Either they moved it farther out, or my legs have gotten even shorter…”

“Hmm? Ah, is this where the dunge-”

The duo yanked the massive woman down a few feet, fingers to their lips as they shushed her aggressively.

“Let’s not stir up a bunch more people by bringing up the d-word in public, yeah? We don’t want another Night Castle incident again before we even get in once.”

“O-Oh, right, you mentioned what happened with them before… they didn’t really s-sound all that scary though…?”

“Look I’d just like to have a dungeon experience where someone doesn’t try to maul me right outside of it for once.”

“And I’d like to not get attacked just for standing near you again.”

“...You both seem to make a lot of e-enemies, huh…?”

It didn’t take them long to find the cave entrance again, navigating around the mountainside a bit before finding the large boulder they’d used as a landmark. A few grunts and shoves later once more exposed the way into the tunnels from before as the rock was moved aside.

Monica, Prim, and Silk all headed right away, pulling up their maps from the previous trip as they tried to trace the route they’d need to take back.

“U-Um…? Is this the only way in…?”

“As far as I know, yeah, why do you- ah.”

The other two looked back towards the entrance, immediately understanding the question at hand.

It was actually rather spacious inside the tunnels, roomy and empty and not at all as claustrophobic as anyone would expect a seemingly natural cave system to be. But the entrance itself was a bit of a tight fit, being what appeared to be an accidental break in the wall when the room was carved out of the stone.

Neither Moni nor Prim had any particular issues with squeezing through the gap comfortably, but they both had conveniently not considered that neither of them even reached five feet tall.

Elise, on the other hand, stood taller than both of them stacked together, and, alongside her massive paired shields, stood roughly equivalent to an average-sized sedan, leaving the below-average-sized entrance comparable to a mousehole for her. Cute, but not even remotely usable.

“…Y’know, I really hadn’t considered this being an issue.”

“I-I-I’m sorry! I didn’t realize being maximum height would be an issue like this so o-often, I can just-”

“Stoneshatter!”

Without waiting for any other ideas, Prim took the issue into her own hands, newly enhanced hammer swinging in hard, directly into the crack they’d crawled in through.

The sound on impact was ear-splitting, the break in the otherwise sheer rock getting blasted open wide, rubble, debris, and the unsuspecting Vanguard herself being launched in every direction at once from the blast.

“There, no problem at all! I got it opened nice and wide for… Elise?”

The disoriented tank was found splayed across a tree opposite the blast zone, eyes swirling as she lay heaped on the grass, armor covered in a fine layer of dust.

“…Well… she can get in now at least? Good job, I suppose?”

“…The armor I made works!”

“…Chkchk…?”

A few Restores, a couple minutes, and several well-placed pokes and prods eventually got her roused awake again, her balance taking a while longer to return as the other three mostly carried her back through the newly expanded cave entrance.

Despite the scorched earth strip mining method they’d done before, the tunnels had seemingly already “healed” themselves, the ore and rock restored like they’d never been here to begin with.

“Nice to know we have a steady source for anything we need more of.”

“I’m more amazed you’ve already used most of it up after how much we gathered…”

Unfortunately, the materials weren’t all that had been respawned, and a familiar horde of stony canines had crawled back out in response to the deafening noise they’d stirred up.

They paced and watched them all, prowling from the shadows and keeping their distance as their low, rumbling growls filled the otherwise silent cave.

“Right, I can handle the mobs again, no sweat-”

Monica stepped forward to once again dispatch the stonehounds like she had last time… only to be stopped immediately, a loud thunk sounding out as a shield larger than her entire body blocked her from advancing any further.

“I-If it’s okay, um… I’d like to t-try and fight something myself, for once…?”

“Oh? As long as you don’t have a heart attack from them swinging at you, they’re all yours.”

“Right… I’ll d-do my best…!”

The kitsune bowed out, leaving Elise to nervously edge forward towards the enemies, their focus entirely on her as the others backed out of aggro range.

“O-Okay… c’mere, nice puppies, n-niiiiiice puppies…”

Both sides edged slowly closer together, their Vanguard anxiously peeking through the gap between her shields, three of the creatures spreading out as they waiting for her to make the first move.

“Shield Crush…!”

Yelling out her only attack skill’s name with all her saved up confidence, she shot forward a few feet with a yelp as her shield dragged her forwards unexpectedly, towards the closest of the golems right as they leapt in as well, the pair colliding with a loud, metallic thonk.

The poor dog-shaped rock bounced harmlessly off of one of her shields, bewildered for a moment in midair before the damage finally caught up with them, their HP bar draining instantly as chunks of stone were sent flying in every direction.

“Did I get it…? O-Oh, it’s gone, where- gah!”

The first of the enemies had been so thoroughly obliterated that she wasn’t even sure if she’d hit it at all, distracted and unawares as the second and third slammed hard into her from either side, having been smart enough to go around the impeding hunks of steel rather than facefirst into it.

Caught between two of the significantly faster golems, they came together hard, crushing her like a vice, hard enough to flatten her paper-thin…

…or would have for anyone else present. In actuality, they both met almost the same fate as the previous one had as they bounced off of the over-armored girl’s cuirass with a dull clank, skidding across the floor with confused whimpers.

“...eh? D-Did they change their mind and not wanna attack…?”

“Elise, um, I think you just-”

“Hey, w-wait up, I was supposed to see what getting attacked is like…!”

She didn’t even wait for any clarification, chasing down the tunnel path after a pair of concussed stonehounds that had wisely decided against continuing to fight a brick wall.

Creaks and clanks echoed out behind her, the massive metal menace determinedly pursuing her prospective testing dummies as they retreated further down into the caverns.

“...damn, my armor is fantastic!~”

“Is that really all you got from that…?”

Silk had already deigned to start charging after her, leaving the other two to fall in after them, hurriedly trying to catch up with their living battering ram.

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Their second trip through the mountain was less outwardly destructive, but no less concerning to any potential outside observers. Their spearheading Vanguard barreled forth blindly, quite literally as their closed-together shields cut off any view of what was ahead of them while they charged dead ahead down the tunneled path.

The trio bringing up the rear did their best to steer her like the speeding truck she was, nudging her left and right at regular intervals as they traced their earlier route back towards the dungeon, occasional cracks and whimpers from run-over stonehounds the only reminder that there was anything other than their party in these tunnels.

“H-How far away is this dungeon…?”

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“Just… haaa… a little farther, I think? Right Moni?”

“I was distracted or unconscious both times I was here, don’t ask me.”

Winding left, right, left, right, back and forth, back and forth, the scenery almost unbearably monotone as their initial energy was burned through, quickly reduced to dragging their feet as they trudged down long, unexciting stone hallways.

Monica stared at her map blankly, wearing the expression of someone deeply annoyed to be moving at what felt like a snail’s pace, trying to find the entrance once more as they ran, and ran, and ran a bit more for good measure.

“Oh… oh! Oh oh oh, right up here on the left, that should be it!”

“Left? O-Okay so just a bit further, and we turn… here-”

They rounded the corner with a newfound pep in their step, once more finding a familiar caved in doorway…

…and a familiar face in front of it, one very large and very annoyed looking boulderhound blocking them off, as it stood directly between them and the dungeon.

“…y’know, I didn’t think to make any bombs ahead of time, actually.”

“I-I’ll handle it then!”

Elise once more stepped up, shields shaking almost as much as she was as she stared up at the first enemy to be larger than she was, her nervous grumbling drowned out under its menacing growls.

“Shield Crush…!”

Shooting herself forward towards the towering golem, her shields bared down on it just like they had earlier with the smaller versions of this one, the blunt weapons easily set to eat a chunk of its HP at the very least.

That is, of course, if they landed to begin with.

And apparently a higher level came with higher intelligence on its part, the massive creature deigning to sidestep the clumsy attack as it swatted at her from the side instead.

“Gah! H-Hey, get back… Shield Crush! Shield Crush!! Shield Crush!!!”

She launched in every possible direction as she pursued the increasingly concerned creature, never landing so much as a single hit on it, but every returned attack barely affecting her either through her bloated defense stats.

“If she could get it to hold still, I could maybe try and bash it around some, but… how’d I end up as the slowest one here…?”

“Hey, I could always try launching you at it-”

“No.”

“…actually though, that does give me an idea…”

Prim’s instinctive reaction to any of Monica’s ideas triggered as she scrambled back several feet away from her, while Monica herself chased after their pinballing tank.

It took a bit of time and creative dodging to get to her without being intercepted by a stray swipe of bite aimed towards her, carefully getting in behind their tank and leaving their shared enemy on the other side of those massive shields as she now joined her in launching about the tunnel chamber.

“Elise, I- guh, hang on, stop moving so much, I’m gonna be sick -okay, I have a better idea than just bouncing back and forth like this, you trust me?”

“Oh? U-Um, I’ll take your word for it then?”

“Great!~ Use Lurk for me then.”

“…eh? But the it’s d-definitely not gonna get any closer… b-but then I can sneak up and get it like that, yeah!”

“…Sure, yeah, you got it!”

This was not even remotely what Monica had in mind for her plan, but whatever got the other girl to play along would make this go much more smoothly, probably.

“O-Okay… Lurk!”

There was a poof of smoke around her as the skill was invoked, her character model now slightly transparent as she reappeared again a moment later.

The stone-toothed canine, previously very focused on the tank pursuing them, shook its head as it lost all sense of where the quarry it had been fighting had vanished to as it lost all aggro on her.

“Oh, it worked! N-Now I’ll just try and get closer so it ca-”

“Taunt!~”

Monica jumped high enough to catch the beast’s line of sight from behind the newly camouflaged Vanguard, waving her arms and stirring up as much of a racket as possible as the skill rippled out, reaching the newly de-aggroed boulderhound as it washed over it in a wave.

One moment it had been focused and dodging, the next it had been calm but confused, and now, just as quickly, it had shifted into maximum aggression upon identifying a particularly frail-looking adventurer in front of it.

“W-W-Wait, I can’t sneak closer now, h-how am I gonna-”

“Don’t worry about that one, he’s got it covered!!”

Sure enough, careful dodging and hit-and-run combat had shifted fully into direct, active aggression as the slavering canine charged dead ahead at its newest target, heedless of anything else at all in the chamber besides them.

“Yeah yeah yeah, go faster idiot, I’m right here, come and get me!~”

Elise’s panic was flatly ignored, the living mound of rubble charging headlong towards the taunting fox as she gleefully beckoned it in, jumping in place to make sure it could see her good and well as she refused to budge from where she stood by even an inch.

There wasn’t enough room from one side to the other for her to dodge even if she had moved by now, the mountain-sized wolf now close enough to feel its breath as it lunged in, forelimbs extended out as it went in to eviscerate the defenseless mage.

Or at least, it would have, had there not still been an equally towering heap of metal separating the two, the monster crashing face-first into Elise’s shields as it lashed out wildly, a sizable chunk of health gone just from initial impact with the cerulean barricade.

“H-Hey, c’mon, get… g-get off already… wait, it’s not h-hitting me…?”

The beast lashed out wildly as the initial attack was blocked, swinging maniacally at the smug caster as she inexplicably remained out of range, completely ignoring the actual armored wall blocking them off.

“See, easy, no more running away to deal with! You’re welcome!~”

“Oh… O-Oh! Right, yeah! Shield Crush!”

There was no effort to dodge the heavily telegraphed attack this time, Elise nudging forward slightly as its body still mostly blocked her from moving any further, another chunk of HP being knocked out of it.

She kept up the attacks, bashing into it from point-blank range again and again, the “actual” tank keeping up her casts of Taunt to keep the incredibly distracted boulderhound focused on her as their offtank slowly and methodically bashed it into loose debris.

After a few more minutes of Shield Crushes and Taunts, the final blow was dealt, Elise charging forward one last time as the monster finally crumbled apart, dashing heroically through it as it exploded into rubble around her.

“Wow, that went a lot better than last time. You’re pretty good at this kid!”

“R-Really…? I’m… I’m glad I’m learning fast then!!”

“…we should really find you a more sane teacher…”

Prim sighed, her pile of bombs fully replenished just in time to be of no help in the fight at all as she rejoined them, gathering up the monster materials blasted about the tunnel.

“What? I’m perfectly fine at teaching her, thank you very much!”

“Maybe if the idea is to turn her into another nightmare build.”

“…The more the merrier?”

She rubbed at her temples, grabbing Elise by the hand as she dragged her through the entrance, towards the dungeon’s entrance room and away from the terrible role model present among them.

Elise was more than happy to follow, face tomato-red once more as the crafter took her by the hand, suddenly losing whatever thought she had wanted to add to the conversation.

“Hey, I’m not… h-hey! Don’t ignore me, get back here! Hey!”

The insulted kitsune chased after them both, sprinting towards the entrance to the second dungeon as the unbalanced party prepared to set off into their first dungeon together.

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