Then a fountain of blood appears in the kobold’s back row. The healer now dead stays upright only through the efforts of the vines now wrapping him up. Behind him stands Jeremy, though not for long as he quickly dashes towards one of the other mages and goes for a repeat performance.

Now alerted to his presence the kobold mage throws up an ice wall but on such short notice Jeremy barely has to exert himself to crash through. Thus another mage dies under his blade.Though the other one takes this time to free itself by freezing the roots solid. As they shatter, it throws itself towards the melee kobolds for safety.

It doesn’t find that though as without the boosts from their leader the already crumbling shield wall disintegrates. Jack and Tess come in from the sides and they both swing their weapons out with all their might. The two shield kobolds on the edges both get knocked flying, though it is a quick trip as they bash into one another.

Between them the other shield kobold receives the full brunt of both attacks and the force alone is enough to kill it. Behind them the dagger kobolds fare better, but only by throwing themselves to the floor. Bill figures this is a suitable place for them to stay as well and with a flourish slams both clubs down two of the kobold’s pelvises.

Ruby at this point has finished putting down the goats, so she turns her attention to the kobold slinger up on the hill. This little irritation had been pelting her all fight and now was the time to get revenge. She claps her hands together and as she pulls them apart an enormous mass of flame appears between them in an arc in front of her.

As if lifting a colossal weight, Ruby pushes the flames toward the slinger. Once the flame leaves her hands, a startling change happens to it. From an indistinct mass of flames it springs outward, creating a collection of ribbons that stretch twice the distance of her outstretched hands.

The kobold tries to dodge the spell but as the ribbons near it they start to twist and spin around as if someone was spinning multiple jump ropes. The kobold doesn’t stand a chance and even the dirt below it shows scars from the spells passing. Ruby laughs at this but then like Ace beside her she staggers and has to sit down before the option is taken out of her hands.

At this point only a dagger wielding kobold and the ice mage can still fight back, but this doesn’t last long. With both the kobolds prone and fighting twice their numbers, the two don’t stand a chance or even have a chance to stand. With that, everyone joins the two mages on the ground.

Jack flexes his arm and nods, “well this better be the last room for the floor. I can’t go through another regular fight let alone one like that.”

Bill nods, “if I had known what was in here I would have voted against exploring it. This was a little more than I was expecting.”

There is a moment of silence before Jeremy scratches his head and shakes his head. “We should have expected it. On the first floor there were more enemies in the kobold room than had been in the goat room right before it. Now here the same thing holds true. In fact, those goats showing up is exactly like the first floor even if they didn’t come from another room.”

“The numbers actually match up well enough. On the first floor there were six goats in the goat room and then the kobold room ended up having 11 enemies. Here we have the ramp room which if my ability to count hasn’t failed me had 13 enemies. In this forest room there were 18 enemies. Now that I think about it, the numbers are an exact match. Both room counts go up by five between the second to last room and the last.”

Ruby shakes her head, “you’re putting too much thought into it. Likely this is just a matter of how much juice the dungeon is able to throw at a room increasing or some such.”

Jeremy shrugs, “not much else we can do at the moment besides speculate. Though speaking of speculation, hey Ace! What’s your chances of developing some healing magic? You’ve got that nature theme going on and at the least you should pick up some stamina restoring power or a spell to speed up natural healing.”

Ace rolls his eyes, “nature isn’t really a healing element despite what some fiction would tell you. It is more of a survival of the fittest sort of thing. While there is technically healing in my repertoire it is more personal. Just look at my shoulder, the wound has already scabbed over even with my amber coating. I expect that with enough time I will develop spells to heal others, but for now my magic is quite selfish.”

Jeremy sighs, “If nature magic can’t heal my stamina, what kind would?”

Ace didn’t exactly focus on magic so looks over at Ruby to see if she knows.

Ruby laughs at this but she does have the answer, “acid magic. Muscle fatigue comes from a buildup of lactic acids, so being able to magically remove it will do wonders for your ability to continue fighting. Now of course, that doesn’t deal with all fatigue related matters. Some pure healing magic would also be needed for the micro-tears in your muscles and I don’t know of anything at our level that could deal with the mental fatigue.”

The group falls back into silence after this revelation. Then after a good bit of time passes, Jeremy jumps up off the ground and stretches. “Well, those herbs aren’t going to pick themselves. Though we should probably go check out if this really is the last room. That and I think there is another beehive on top of the little hill. While we rested here, I’ve been hearing them buzz around and the ones I’ve seen all return to up there.”

Everyone else sighs, but after a little effort they all stand up. After that it doesn’t take the group all that long to find the exit to the room. The tunnel out is right in the room's corner, as some of them had guessed it would. When they enter the hallway, the group discovers that much to their relief the core room is right there. It doesn’t even have a stone door this time.

Satisfied that they had reached the end of the dungeon the group returned to the forest. Then, with a little help from Bill, Jeremy climbs up on top of the hill. Once up there the beehive isn’t hard to find and he soon returns to the group with a pot of honey.

He smiles and points toward the back of the room, “now it is time to go and check on what plants there are to harvest.”

Bill shakes his head, “don’t expect me to help you climb that cliff.”

Jeremy laughs, “don’t worry, I plan to climb it myself. Though I would much appreciate it if Ruby would return to the top of the wooden staircase at the room’s entrance. I don’t want anything to be waiting for me at the top of the cliff and she has the range to attack anything that might try something.”

Ruby waves her hand, “I don’t have much magical oomph left in me. Though as long as there isn’t another tribe of kobolds chilling up there I should be able to at least give you a chance to retreat. I think Ace being at the bottom of the cliff will be of much more help as I assume his vines can break your fall.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes, “hey, hey, hey! What’s with the assumption that I will fall? Even before the end I could climb a cliff like that in my sleep. There are enough handholds on it that unless oil pours down the wall, I will be fine.”

Ruby shrugs, “no skin off my nose. We are going to have to climb the staircase again anyway to leave. The portal might let us directly exit the dungeon but we have to get to it first.”

Jeremy nods, “to the cliff it is then!”

Ace glares at him for a moment. “You can go to the cliff with me. I support your harvesting, but I want the rest of the group with Ruby. Who knows if we missed something.”

Jeremy sticks his tongue out and then jogs off towards a spot he had noticed while on the wood platform. There wasn’t anything special about except you can see it from said platform. An important feature if he wanted Ruby to provide over watch. Ace sighs and walks after him while the rest of the group heads off towards the wooden platform.

After the two groups are in place Jeremy does a few stretches and climbs the cliff. With all the handholds, he zips right up the cliff face. Up and up he goes and that is what tips him off to the fact that something is wrong. 

Jeremy looks up and sees that he should be halfway up. Looking down shows the same thing to be true. Below him Ace shouts up that, “something’s strange with the cliff! Pay more attention as you climb it.”

Jeremy scoffs, as if he wasn’t already going to do that. He reaches up and grabs the next handhold, then looks up and down again. New handholds, but he doesn’t seem to have moved at all. “Interesting, now what happens if I stare at the ground.”

Jeremy memorizes the position of the next couple handholds and then looks down at Ace. Not taking his eyes off of Ace, he climbs up those memorized holds. This action gives him a bit of a headache. “Well, that’s trippy. Hey Ace, you get a headache while watching me climb? When I stare at you, you both stay the same distance away and get further away. Quite trippy.”

Ace shakes his head, “I can tell something odd is happening but it is more like I am following you up. Then when I look away there is just more cliff for you to climb.”

Jeremy sighs, “well let’s see how far I can get then! This isn’t some illusion so I am traveling the distance. If anything, this wall is a free climber's dream course. The ability to climb forever yet never be more than a story off the floor is amazing.”

He shakes his head to clear it and starts to climb again. This time he pays more attention to his progress and at some point he realizes what is happening. It isn’t that he is stuck in the center of the wall. Rather, he is climbing higher, but the distance he actually goes on the wall is a fraction of what it should be.

Taking this as a challenge, he continues to climb ever upward. He had been willing to climb a two story cliff for the herbs. What’s a few more stories compared to being able to harvest the plants before his wife? Slowly he makes progress and he reaches a breaking point. His body is about to give out from exhaustion, but that doesn’t stop him. The top of the cliff is only a few handholds away, or so it seems. Hand over hand he climbs the cliff and just as he breaks through the limits of his body Jeremy crawls over the top of the cliff.

He flops over onto his back and waves his hand over the edge to let Ace know he is fine. Across the way Ruby has been watching the entire thing and she can only shake her head in amazement. Ace might not have had the best view of it from the bottom of the cliff, but from her position it was obvious something had been going on. She can only sigh to herself and hope that the cliff isn’t so soul breaking or the Barrai’s might be the only ones able to harvest from that plateau. They would definitely have to do some tests.

Akhier

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