Chapter 28: Chapter 28: Out of the Loop

Ears ringing and eyes spinning, four deeply disoriented individuals clambered out from behind a pair of soot-stained greatshields, the entire tunnel around them drowned out in smoke as they struggled to regain their senses.

“See… I, uh… I told you it’d speed it up…!”

“Wha… what was that…?”

“I said it’d- cough, cough -speed this up!”

“Oh, yeah, I feel plenty faster now, thanks…”

“I-I… think we’re all alive, a-at least…!”

“C-Chhhk… chk chhhk…”

It took them a bit to shake themselves conscious again, trying to let the dust settle so they could actually see the aftermath of Prim’s expedited puzzle solution. The smoke eventually cleared enough for them to see the end results of the twin explosions as they all hacked up burnt ash and gunpowder.

Appropriately enough, all of them had learned Blast Resistance from the explosion even while hunkered away from the brunt of it, Monica having gained a second point of it to match her earlier explosive reward.

Sure enough, whatever puzzle had been here before had been… “solved” technically, the previously infinite hallway now having a clear length as the entrance and back of the cave were both visible from their location, roughly in the middle of the tunnel.

The path wasn’t actually all that long in actuality, maybe a few hundred feet from the front door to the back, ending in a half-excavated wall, several newly blown-open side paths now wide open.

Unfortunately, the puzzle they’d so conveniently bypassed clearly had numerous possible exits they could have opened, and their blast-mining operation had opened all of them at once.

Equally disoriented enemy mobs clambered out from their newly opened hideaways, all aggroing on the person responsible for waking them at once. The majority of them were similar to the stonehounds that filled the rest of the mountain outside, though rough loose rocks were replaced with smoother, more carved stones, canine features engraved in statue-like bodies. Among each of the enemy groups, a lone wolf stayed near the middle of their horde, bodies laced with glistening yellow ore, clearly the leaders of the packs.

[Mine Stonehound] Lv. 22

[Mine Goldhound] Lv. 25

“…oh, I didn’t really plan for them having false exits too, ehe… sorry?”

They were, unfortunately, not so polite as to accept the crafter’s apology.

Elise barely had the time to raise her shields again, one facing either side as the tide of bodies slammed into them both the moment after, teeth gnashing and claws swiping as they tried to get around the big blue blockades the Vanguard had planted in between them and their targets.

“A-Are you all ok?”

“Chk…!”

“I’m in!”

“Never better…!”

The other three huddled for safety against their offtank, once more cramped together for safety, albeit this time from something that wasn’t their own fault.

“Shield… S-Shield Crush! Shield Crush…!”

She bounced back and forth by several inches on each attack, one way then the other, bashing against the hordes of enemies trying to chip away at her overtuned defenses.

As much as she tried however, she could hardly make a dent in the swarm around them as more and more of them piled in, at least a dozen individual packs of the aggressive statues snapping at her over and around the tower shields.

“Guh, there’s t-too many of them, I can’t m-move at all…!”

Prim poked out her head and her hammer wherever one tried to scramble past their walled bunker, playing a frantic game of whack-a-mole with the living statues.

“Doing my best here, just- stay down already -just keep us covered a bit longer…!”

“Yeah we got it down here, no worries!!”

“Chkchk c-chk!!”

Bolts of dull lightning and wads of webbing shot past at everything that wasn’t bashed to death already, bodies being launched backwards away from the party only to be replaced by more and more of them swarming in to fill the open space.

“Elise can you- guh -try to get us to one of the side passages a bit further down?”

“E-Eh…? I… I can try but i-it’s a but crowded…!”

“…Hey, Prim, can you hold onto her leg here?”

“…why?”

“Do we really have the luxury of doubting me right now?”

“Guh, fine, just try and not get her killed please…!”

Monica and Prim both grabbed onto one of her armored legs, Silk now braced up against their fox for dear life.

Elise, noticing the other two now clinging tightly to her, returned to a familiar shade of red contrasting her blue armor, forgetting entirely about everything attacking them with the sudden physical intimacy.

“E-E-Eh, I, um… t-this isn’t really the t-time for, uh… u-um… what w-were we…”

“Elise, eyes forward!”

“Y-Yeah, this is a b-bit forward, b-but I don’t-”

“No, just… good enough! Blowback!”

Her staff bonked against the flustered tank’s back while she was unfocused, flashing bright as she cast the skill against her own party member, the wad of players and a spider suddenly transforming into an oversized cannonball as they shot forward through the mineshaft, shield-first.

The metal heap barreled through the piles of monsters, bashing them out of the way as they flew over top of them, an unlucky few of them getting hit head-on as they were flattened by the speeding projectile.

The sudden flight was over as quickly as it started, the slight angle to their launch crashing them against one of the wooden support structures, nearly splitting it in half as the impact knocked them off to the side through one of the newly opened side paths.

“See, I’m still… still a perfect shot…!~”

“God, please start warning us first…”

“W-Where did we… gah, t-they’re still coming!”

Every last one of the blown away golems quickly scrambled back to their feet, heads snapping around as they relocated their target, charging back towards the hallway they’d landed in with a renewed anger.

“Oh hell, Elise, block the-”

“No, get back, I’ve got it!”

Their bombsmith herself was the first person steady enough to stand up again, shaking her head to clear the constant blunt force trauma-induced disorientation as she once more dug into her inventory, countless palm-sized explosives being hurled out one after the other as she pelted the entrance to their current hideaway.

Blast after blast blew back the hordes trying to follow after them, the stone walls breaking apart from the concentrated fire, the already damaged support structure they’d slammed into eventually giving way as the tunnel caved in behind them, shutting out the muffled noises of stubborn stonehounds still trying to dig through to them.

Eventually even that died down, the rumbling of the collapsing cave growing quiet around them as the silence and darkness returned, finally giving them a moment of peace.

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All four of them collapsed into a heap behind the cave-in blocking off the thoroughly detonated entrance hall, each of them equally singed and shell-shocked after successfully “solving” the first room of the dungeon.

“Do you have to… haaa… solve everything by blowing it up?”

“Oh like you’re one to talk. It was a better idea than sitting there for an hour trying to open it up the slow way.”

“Yeah but why do I always have to be the one getting blown up…”

“It’s o-okay Moni… I-I got… a little blown up too…”

“Hm..? O-Oh, right! Restore!”

The bickering pair finally remembered their tank was still with them as well, the heavily armored girl slumped facedown onto the floor, her HP and morale both equally depleted after her first real experience tanking.

Soft green light enveloped her, their caster doing her best to serve as a makeshift healer as well as she cast her basic heal a few times, her bloated MAG stat making even the low-level healing magic enough to get her back to full health in only a couple casts.

“T-Thank you… sorry I’m a little d-dizzy from… being weaponized again…”

“No no, you did great! I just, er… got a little creative with helping out, ehe…”

“Yeah, you tanking all of that was the first time one of us has done anything remotely normal so far, good job.”

“Chkchk!”

“O-Oh, that’s what tanking is supposed to be like, then…?”

“Mmhmm, that’s all there is to it!~”

“Ah, okay… I-I wouldn’t mind never tanking again, in that case…”

With that, she resumed lying facedown, fully healed physically, but still entirely defeated mentally, Silk stepping in as emotional support as they did their best to get her up off of the hard stone floor.

“…she’s taking this all a lot better than I thought she would, honestly.”

“We should maybe try traumatizing her a little less so we don’t kill the poor girl…”

Prim paused for a long moment, a dead silence hanging over them both.

“I said, we should try-”

“Okay okay, I get it! No more using her for combat, fine… I’ll give her a little while before I do it again.”

“I… suppose that’s the best I can get out of you at this point, huh?”

She sighed exasperatedly, shouldering her massive hammer as she began heading down the new corridor they were in, Monica leaving a few spare potions with the other two before following after her, the two of them setting off ahead on recon duty.

The earlier fight had already drawn out most every enemy in this part of the dungeon before they’d closed the entrance back up again, leaving the rest of this corridor eerily empty as they explored.

It wasn’t nearly as long or as worn down as the entrance hall had been, the beams all much more maintained as the walls and floor turned from rough mined-out edifices to smooth, carved-out stone.

Eventually even the support structures ended as the scenery changed drastically, the hallway opening up to a large main chamber, just as ornate as the path leading in would imply. Sparkling veins of gold ran through every surface, white and black stone contrasting one another as they blended together, interwoven into a massive domed room, less of a mine and more like a temple of some abandoned faith.

“Huh, was the last dungeon this fancy too?”

“It was a lot… dirtier than this, I guess. More bugs too, and a lot less gold.”

“Glad it sounds like we got the better option of the two, then.”

“…what’s wrong with bugs?”

They explored a bit deeper in, checking the contents of the inner chamber as they investigated around. The outer walls hung evenly-spaced torches, the kitsune lighting each one with a Flare, each of them burning a brilliant gold-white color as they were ignited. And as the dim room was slowly brightened up, they could finally make out the rest of the room’s contents.

Directly opposite where they’d entered lay a massive, engraved door, inlaid with glistening metal and immediately recognizable to the one who’d bested the previous dungeon. Before it sat a statue made of the same gold-lined stone as the golem wolves they’d become intimately familiar with, depicting a regal knight brandishing a polished greatsword proudly, standing against the doorway as it blocked any entry.

“Wait, is that-”

“The boss room? Yeah, the door matches exactly, that’s gotta be it.”

“Huh… pretty short dungeon, then.”

“I mean, we did skip a fairly large chunk of it thanks to someone.”

“Streamlining! We’re supposed to be professionals, yeah? So we’ll just beat the last stretch of this place as soon as I get rid of the decor.”

“I’ll go get Elise and Silk then and let them know we’re-”

Monica was cutoff mid-sentence as she turned back towards the exit, fully intending to reassemble their party before doing anything further.

Prim however had already stepped up to clear the path forward for the rest of them, hammer at the ready as she approached the blocking statue.

The instant her foot touched the inner rung of the room however, the room awoke.

A sudden burst of force pushed her forward, the gold lining the floor shining brightly as a shimmering, crystalline wall arose from it, creating a perfect ring around both the crafter and the statue she’d set out to remove.

“P-Prim? What’d you… gah, what is this?”

She kicked out at the wall, instantly regretting it as the transparent barricade had felt like a boiling hot frying pan to the touch, singing the tip of her boot as she nursed her stubbed toes.

“Oh, hell, I set off something didn’t I?”

“You okay in there?”

“Yeah, yeah, just stuck it looks like. Must be another puzzle or something, I guess.”

“Hmm… I’ll look for anything out here to… oh.”

“What? Don’t just ‘oh’ me, what is it?”

Her eyes widened, the fox hastily gesturing towards the door behind her, the halfling following her gaze to see what had silenced her so suddenly.

As soon as the barrier had risen up, so had the actual challenge of the room.

Descending from its lofty pedestal, the statue of a knight leapt down, stiff limbs slowly animating as it lifted that regal greatsword it held, stony gaze fixated on the adventurer now locked in with it.

“...I-I’ll get the others back here as soon as I can ok? Just… hang on in there!”

“Wait, don’t leave me here, don’t just…”

The worried mage sprinted back down the hall, every point of speed she had going into trying to get help back here.

Now entirely alone in the gold-walled arena, Prim nervously lifted her hammer just as her foe hefted their own weapon, the lone Berserker prepared for her solo encounter.

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