Scot was doing a great job of eliminating our flying enemies with crossbow bolts and I continued to help, my aim wasn't the best but the creatures still had to pay attention to my attacks.
With only a few dragonflies still alive I had the time to look at the wave of monsters, there were still quite a few bugbears trying to destroy the spikes and having some success with the more deteriorated ones but, without the room for a charge, the battle boars were less than effective, unfortunately the lizards had started arriving now and they could fit between spikes if they could get through the rest of the monsters.
Deciding to experiment I concentrated into one of the more effective bugbears and tried to send it an illusion of a human by his side, casting lesser ilusion took a little effort and I felt some energy leave me but was kind of instinctive, unfortunatly I saw no effect, I also saw no fluctuation on the things magic with my eyes, I was concentrating on the beast for almost 40 seconds when I finished arming my crossbow and shot it in the neck not killing it but wounding it enough that other beasts forced it away.
Then I saw another bugbear looking at me, its face filled with rage and changed tactics, meeting its eyes I cast Major Visual Illusion instead feeling a large drain on my magic and having to grab the edge of the window to steady myself, I made the thing see and smell every monster around itself as a human, the effect was instant, I saw some of my mana entering the beast’s body from its eyes and almost… infecting it before it went absolutely feral killing three bugs and even caving another bugbear’s head in before the other monsters noticed and turned against it.
Scott was mostly ignoring the four remaining dragonflies now and instead aiming for the lizardman squeezing through the spikes and keeping them from succeeding, monsters and bug corpses were starting to act as obstacles to the lizardman and a few were even killed by mistake by the larger monsters.
Noticing how effective my little sharingan trick had been I started looking for another beast to trick catching the eyes of another bugbear and a wounded battle boar the result was… impressive even if it left me panting in exhaustion, the first bugbear had just been killed when the second one went insane, as for the battle boar it had been forced back and allowed to retreat building space to gather a strong charge so, even wounded it came back moving at 60 km/h, using its tusks it gored the first bugbear it hit while simply stomping on six lizardman and a few bugs continuing to attack everything in a straight line until it was stopped by the cheer amount of corpses in its way, then it proceed to stomp or try to gore anything that came even close.
Stumbling away I put my back against the wall and cradled my head almost falling down from the headache, I could feel myself being just short of a mind down, shit I had gotten cocky and almost fucked up.
Pushing myself away from the wall I grabbed my discarded crossbow and tried to arm it again but my arms were shaking from the effort, I didn’t even notice my own sharingans had deactivated so, when a blur flew through the window and hit me in the leg with a shot I was caught completely by surprise and released a scream of pain.
Looking at my tight I saw the dragonfly’s projectile piercing me almost all the way through and nearly pulled it out before remembering blood loss was a thing, with some effort and a lot of gritted teeth I managed to ignore the pain and load another bolt before looking at the fight bellow, without my sharingan for help I could barely make out what was happening in the confusion so I just aimed at the mass of monsters and shoot hoping to hit something, then another dragonfly almost took my head off and I just ducked down.
A minute later I remembered the small bag of potions and found the health one, pulling the projectile off I splashed the potion on my tight and saw it knitting back together at enormous speed, a few minutes later I was completely healed and the noise from fighting had disappeared.
“Hey… huff, hufff… you alive there newbie?” came Mord’s voice from below so I gathered myself and answered.
“More or less!” noticing my headache getting better and my sharingan reactivating I released a breath of relief “had to use a potion”
“Eh what can you do, they're cheap ones anyways, come down here, time to get harvesting!” With a sight I managed to push myself back on my feet to see Mord posing above the body of a large bugbear and giving a roar of triumph “take that you overgrown rug who’s your boss now huh!”
Scott just palmed his face while Guile was sitting down and laughing loudly, covering a large claw mark on his chest with bandages
Using one of the remaining ropes hanging from the safehouse I lowered myself back to the ground and looked around at the massacre, blood painted the floor completely red and there were literal piles of monster corpses where they had tried to climb over each other to get to the warriors, seeing as nobody else was moving I pulled my dagger and resigned myself to harvesting everything by myself, still a little shaken I had to ask “Shit wasn’t this too dangerous?”
“Naa, it was a little harder than usual but that's just because some of the things went berserk and Mord took the opportunity to save some Valis” Scott told me with a smile while I ripped a magic stone from a crushed centipede.
Finishing the easier monsters I gathered the dropped items in a spot without blood or ichor and approached my first bugbear, getting to the muscular beast’s magic stone was a pain in the ass leaving me elbow deep in its gut, thank the gods the monsters dissolved into dust after I took the stone away making my job easier with each one I finished “What do you mean?”
“Heh, this isn’t the first time we do this newbie” Mord bragged, then kicked the body of a lizardman away and cleaned a spot for himself to sit “we must have done this what, a hundred times before we dared even try with only three people”
“A hundred and fifteen” Scott corrected “then we did it another five times with an extra party looking over to save our asses in case we messed up”
“Yeah that seems about right, pass me the water Guile” Grabbing the bag of water Mord took a long drink and sighed in happiness “sure Rivira lost some adventurers when it first started doing this but we got it down to a routine”
Looking around I couldn’t see how the warriors would have survived without my illusions driving monsters insane, the lizardman or centipedes would have eventually gotten into the clearing and overcome them with numbers.
Releasing a laugh Mord decided to explain “You don’t really think we usually fight everything here do you? Let me tell you newbie the secret to surviving the dungeon is to work smarter not harder, you saw how the battle boars and bugbears were the first to arrive and blocked the patch for the others right?”
“Yeah, they were pretty disorganized”
“Well this won’t work on the deeper floors but here we just have to survive long enough to get the biggest amount of monsters in a small area then Scott there start throwing two or three magic bombs to kill most of them, after that we just have to finish off the stragglers, groups with a powerful mage have it even easier since they can chant without interruption inside the safehouse”
Turning towards the rogue I saw him patting one of his larger pouches at his waist, thinking about what I had seen I nodded, yeah I could see it working, the larger monsters get funneled into a smaller area trying to get to the warriors while the smaller ones are forced to climb over or squeeze between them, when they were as concentrated as the party could manage someone just blows them all up.
“Worst case scenario the explosions buy us enough time to climb the ropes to safety” nodded Guile while pointing at the cliff with his thumb.
“Wouldn’t that be a little too… easy?” I questioned, from what I remembered Adventurers only gained levels when they went through challenges
“Well… not easy, it took a lot of training” Mord told me and grabbed a piece of ration “newbie let me tell you a secret, not everything has to be about gaining levels, sometimes it's alright to just make a living, sure I’d get more excelia if I was constantly putting my life at risk but, the thing with taking risks is that sometimes they don’t pay off and, if it’s your life on the line…”
“Yep” said Scott sitting besides his party members and taking the water from Mord’s hand “they say Oratio is the city of adventurers but a better name would be the city of the corpses, for every Sword Princess or King there are tens of thousands who die”
Continuing to harvest crystals and drops I spent the next hour and a half just slashing open monsters and watching them decompose into dust, when I was finally done my arms were aching and my back was killing me from having to lean over so many corpses but we had three pouches full of magic stones, a nice pile of smaller monster drops and almost 70 kilos of boar meat, it would have to be washed and cooked at the town but would feed us for a few days.
“Great, that should be enough, we're going back before it gets too dark” Mord told the group as I finished putting everything inside the giant backpack.
Carrying everything was hard and left me huffing and puffing to the point I had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other or risk falling down but, surprisingly, I made it all the way, the bonus from being a level 1 being impressive, thankfully we only got into another two small fights and I didn’t have to engage since the dungeon hadn’t spawned things back yet.
We reached the town when the lights were almost gone and the party decided to celebrate the delve in the pub but I was just too tired, my entire body was aching and my back was killing me, I didn’t even know how I hadn’t fallen down yet so I just handed the entire haul of drops to Bors for safekeeping and distribution, handed the magic stone pouches to Mord and ignored everything else until I saw a bed in front of me, then I fell on top of it and passed out.
using its tusks it gored the first bugbear it hit while simply stomping on six lizardman and a few bugs continuing to attack everything in a straight line until it was stopped by the cheer amount of corpses in its way,
Cheer -> sheer
Looking at my tight I saw the dragonfly’s projectile piercing me almost all the way through and nearly pulled it out before remembering blood loss was a thing,
pulling the projectile off I splashed the potion on my tight and saw it knitting back together at enormous speed,
Tight -> thigh
Tftc