We looked around after stepping through the portal and saw that we were surrounded by buildings similar to the previous floor except that they were all well maintained and populated by various goblins and kobolds. We were expecting this as it had been explained to us by the scouts that the fifth floor portal put us into a safe zone so we relaxed and didn’t attack any of the monsters.

As the tension in the air lifted, Aerith said ‘So, what do we want to do now? It looks like we might be the first ones here so we have the whole area to ourselves.’

‘We should split up and take a look around to gather more intel before meeting back here in an hour to share what we find.’ Yuvus suggested, everyone gave various noises of assent so we each quickly went different ways with me going north. I quickly found a store full of random materials and tools for pretty much any trade, some of which I vaguely recognised from when either Aerith or Yuvus worked on one of their projects.

Most of it wasn’t useful for me since I had no interest in any of those hobbies although they did have some good quality paper and ink that I could use to expand my grimoire that I bought for 120 points of mana before moving on. I didn’t find much else on my search but on my way back I saw two women walking together holding hands and talking about something although I was too far away to hear exactly what it was they were saying.

This drew my attention since neither of them were either a kobold or a goblin but I didn’t recognise them as part of the raid. I wanted to call out to them but they turned a corner before I had a chance and I didn’t have time to go running after some strangers. I returned to the portal just as everyone else arrived and we quickly found somewhere to sit down and tell each other what we had found.

I was right about Aerith and Yuvus getting excited about the department store I found. It turned out there were four stores in total, each with a different specialty, as well as a tavern and five free houses. After having gone through 4 floors we were pretty hungry and didn’t feel like eating our bland rations so we went to the tavern straight away. Once we had all eaten our fill we made a list of everything that we would need to get from the various shops before leaving the tavern and going shopping.

About another hour later we had gathered everything but still hadn’t found any of the other parties. We guessed that this meant we had been the first party to get to the fifth floor which we were all happy about. There was nothing else for us to do and it was getting pretty late so we decided that one of us would stay by the portal to welcome any parties that got through before it got really late or everyone turned up, at which point they would join us in resting for the night.

Aerith lost the game of rock paper scissors so she stayed behind, she wasn’t too happy about it but she lost the game fairly and no one else wanted to take her place so she didn’t complain. The rest of us quickly went to the houses and claimed the first one for ourselves. The building was quite spacious for someone like me that had grown up as a commoner although some of the noble’s mansions that I had been in for various events ever since I graduated from magic school were much bigger.

It had a spacious kitchen with a lot of working area as well as a magical device that looked like a stove but it had nowhere for the fuel to go. After a bit of experimenting I ran some mana through it and one of the circles started to emit blue flames. Happy that I understood how to work the stove I had a look around the rest of the house. Unfortunately there were no other magical devices so I went up to one of the bedrooms on the third floor and went to sleep.

The bed was probably one of the softest, and comfiest, beds I have ever slept on, giving me one of the best night's sleep I have ever had which got me waking up feeling extremely well rested and energetic. Everyone slowly woke up one by one before meeting up in the dining room for breakfast, each of us having something different as we had bought a variety of food from the grocery store last night.

Aerith told us that three of the other parties arrived before she returned to get some sleep herself. This actually surprised me quite a bit since all of the parties were similar level to us so, while I thought we could beat all of them to the fifth floor, I expected everyone to make it here by the end of the day. Hearing this we all quickly finished our breakfast and made our way to the tavern where everyone taking part in the raid had been told to meet so that we could go over the plan one more time.

About five minutes later we opened the tavern doors to see that only two other parties were already here and were quietly waiting for everyone else to turn up. It took about half an hour for the other two parties to arrive, one later one looking slightly more embarrassed than the other. As soon as everyone had turned up the raid leader, a tall Tiefling named Astaroth, cleared their throat before speaking loud enough for everyone in the tavern to clearly hear them.

‘Now that we are all here we can start this meeting, hopefully it won’t be too long as there isn’t much to go over.’ He looked around the room to check that everyone was paying attention to him. ‘From the reports we gathered from various scouts this floor is full of treasure and the overgrown city environment makes it incredibly hard for a large group like ours to work efficiently.

‘Those two factors put together means that it would be best if we all found separate ways to get to the tower. You all probably already know this but there are three main areas that you can go through to get to the centre of the city.’ He paused once more so that anyone could ask a question if they needed to but when no one spoke up he carried on ‘The first route is to the left through a tribe of goblins, the second route is to the right and through a tribe of kobolds.

‘The third and final route is through the middle where you will have to fight both kobolds and goblins in three way brawls as they don’t seem to get along all that well. Two of the parties will go to the right before splitting off at the first intersection, two more will go the other way and the last group will go down the middle. Now, does anyone have any preferences on where they want to go?’

As soon as he finished saying this the tavern exploded into a cacophony of noise with everyone trying to be the ones to get to choose where to go. This went on for a full minute before the raid leader let out a booming ‘ALRIGHT, I see we won’t be able to do this like adults so I will treat you like children. Everyone that wants to fight the goblins raise a hand.’

We had already talked about this and our team was very good at strong, single target attacks so taking out small groups would be better for us. Thanks to the scouts we knew that this was more aligned with how the goblins operated so we all raised a hand as well as one other party. After looking around and seeing the two parties raising their hands the raid leader spoke up again ‘Ok once this meeting is over you two will head to the left.’

He then turned to the two remaining groups before asking, ‘Do either of you want to go through the middle and fight both tribes.’ At this every member in one of the parties nodded eagerly while the other party looked unsure of what they wanted to do. ‘Ok you can go through the middle of the city and the two remaining parties will head to the right and fight the kobolds. This meeting is now over, I will see you all at the tower.’

At this everyone stood up and slowly started leaving the tavern to go their separate ways. We left the safe zone from the left exit with one other party next to us but we quickly came to a fork in the path and split off from each other. Now that we could be attacked at any moment everyone was extremely alert and was looking all around us to make sure that we wouldn’t be ambushed.

We walked around the city for a while before we finally found our first encounter, a group of seven goblins that were fortified inside of a rundown building. The three goblin warriors were positioned around the front entrance with the hobgoblin leader while the archers were all on the second floor looking out of various windows. It seemed that they hadn’t spotted us yet which was very fortuitous as we would get to initiate the fight.

Yuvus didn’t have any strong spells that could take out any of the goblins from afar but the rest of us did so the three of us each chose one of the archers and then readied our attacks. Aerith got down on the ground and used a tripod to steady her aim at the leftmost archer, Thejeon aimed an arrow at the middle archer while imbuing it with various spells and I created a ball of lava that quickly cooled into an incredibly dense rock in front of me.

After a minute everyone was ready so Thejeon counted down from three and as soon as he said ‘go’ all our attacks flew 100 feet before striking each of the archers and taking them all down in one fell swoop. This made a lot of noise, alerting the remaining monsters of our presence, but they didn’t have any ranged attacks so all they could do was charge at us. By the time they got to us we had brought down two of the warriors and heavily injured the hobgoblin.

Yuvus engaged the large hobgoblin but the last warrior was charging at the rest of us so I quickly summoned my shadow blade before meeting it. I couldn’t use my sword to block its attacks but I had enough experience dodging that I didn’t get hit while I weaved around it and struck at it to make sure that it couldn’t ignore me. After a few seconds a bullet from Aerith’s gun managed to hit it in its heart, instantly finishing it off.

I looked back to where the bullet came from and thanked her before looking around for Yuvus now that I was free to help. I found him just in time to see him block an attack with his shield knocking the hobgoblin off-balance just long enough for him to smash its head in with his hammer, finishing the fight. It had been a very easy fight so we just spent a minute catching our breath and collecting the few bits of loot that was dropped before moving on.

It didn’t take long to find the next encounter since we bumped into a party that was patrolling the area and since we wouldn’t be able to get rid of half of them in one attack this encounter ended up being much harder. Both sides were ready for a fight however so the street immediately burst into chaos with a bunch of fire spirits appearing around Yuvus that attacked all the enemies while slowing them down.

The goblin archers, as well as Aerith and Thejeon, retreated away from the melee, I materialised my sword as I cast both my shields around myself and charged into the fray. The warriors raised their shields and braced for our attacks while the hobgoblin charged at Yuvus. As the hobgoblin reached him the dwarf swung his hammer in a wide sideways arc at the hulking monster.

Unfortunately it was blocked by the hobgoblin’s own longsword but Yuvus had hit it with such force that it was stunned for a second which allowed him to get a solid hit with a second swing. Thejeon quickly followed up by shooting two arrows at the leader, both hit but only the first penetrated through the armour while the other one bounced off harmlessly. In the chaos I was quickly surrounded by the three warriors, limiting my movement quite a bit.

Luckily I had my shields up so two of the attacks were completely repelled by the first layer and while the third attack made it through that layer it was stopped by the second layer, although the shield was quite weak so it already had a crack in it after just one hit. Meanwhile the hobgoblin was angrily swinging its longsword at Yuvus, most of its attacks either missing entirely or getting absorbed by his shield but one lucky hit managed to get through, leaving a gash on the dwarf’s left cheek.

I couldn’t let myself continue to be surrounded so I thrust my sword at the warrior in front of me. Luckily they didn’t realise it wasn’t physical so they tried to stop it with its’ shield instead of dodging, the sword just went straight through the shield and into the goblin causing it to convulse but not go down. Before it could bring its body under control I used my momentum to finish it off by swinging my sword through its head.

I used the break in their formation to quickly slip out before turning around to face the two remaining warriors. By this time the archers had finally retreated enough that they felt comfortable attacking us, most of the archers missed entirely but one hit me, another hit Yuvus and a third went off target so much that it hit one of the warriors. The hit wasn’t too bad for me since I had my shields but the second shield had almost completely broken now, I wasn’t sure if it would last a third hit.

Yuvus was built to take hits so even with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder he didn’t look phased at all and I wasn’t worried. I heard Aerith’s gun go off several times as bullets whizzed past me and at the archers, I turned around for a second to see that one of the archers was on the ground with a pool of blood starting to form underneath them. During all of this the goblins that were still inside of Yuvus’s spell were starting to get covered in burns and even catching fire a little bit.

The burns hadn’t killed any of them yet but it was certainly working through their health. They even managed to create an opening for Yuvus to strike the hobgoblin twice, dealing heavy damage to the leader and almost bringing it down. Seeing that I was in a bit of trouble, Thejeon sent two arrows at the warriors in front of me, both hitting one of the warriors, finishing it off and leaving just one warrior for me to deal with.

The final warrior started to send wild swing after wild swing at me but they were all easy to read so I dodged all of them before thrusting my sword through its abdomen, killing it thanks to the flame spirits dealing so much damage to it. With nothing left to stop me I quickly started running at the archers and by the time I got there Aerith had already downed another one so I quickly dealt with the last one.

When I turned around to see how Yuvus was doing the hobgoblin was already dead on the floor, slowly dissolving into mana. We were a bit beat up so we took five minutes to rest and collect the loot, just some mana and health potions which we stored in our backpacks before carrying on. Over the next two hours we fought six more groups of goblins, each ranging in difficulty between what the first two encounters had been and finding four chests full of decent loot before we reached the tower.

The party that had gone the middle route was already there since it was the most direct, and therefore shortest, way to the tower but no one else had arrived yet. Since the fifth floor was a large maze that incentivised exploration the time that people took to get to the centre could hugely vary. It could take anywhere from a single hour, if you went straight to the tower, to half a day, if you checked absolutely everywhere. Luckily it only took two more hours for the remaining three parties to arrive letting us finally enter the tower.