Akhier

Heyo, a new month has arrived! Had quite the drop off on Patron at the last minute. It always happens at the end of the month, but it's never fun to see. Still, things are going alright over there as I keep plugging away at the early access chapters and the monthly short story. I've gotten relatively good responses on that last bit as the Patrons get to choose the story prompt. Anyway, once you finish reading this chapter, if you want Patreon has the next two chapters free. I'll link them here ( 160 and 161 ) and they're in the post-chapter note as well.

Doyle and Ally chat a bit more about his levels but soon enough he is back to finishing the sixth floor. With everything else taken care of and nothing critical happening outside, Doyle decides to focus on completing all the gate connections. While it works, at the moment, all the rooms can only attach to one another in one direction. With more gates, the floor will be able to rotate each room making it ever harder to tell that it is all the same rooms over and over.

A week passes as he focuses on this before Ally interrupts him. Ace has been making attempts at the fifth floor every few days now, but they haven’t gotten much further. Today was different though because now Jim is bringing his team in to give it an attempt. While Ally admitted she didn’t think they would beat the floor, it was their first attempt so she figured he would want to watch.

And she wasn’t wrong. Ace was a known quantity, but Jim tended to keep his cards close to his chest. All of Jim’s serious training is done in the forest alone. And that doesn’t take into account the fact he has some real wild cards on his team. The only known quality is Jeremy and that is just because he has the same training as his wife, Susan. Bill and Tess at least are melee, which reduces the possibilities.

Kellinger? A complete mystery. He uses magic, sure. But it tends to not be the mainstream, instead choosing stuff like the grease spell. Then, to really ramp it up we end it with Kelly. A magic researcher so who knows what nonsense she has now. Up till now, she mostly stuck to using magic that Ruby had already figured out.

You would think that with all the magic and weirdness they would outweigh Doyle’s caution of Jim. It doesn’t and he proves right out the gate why this should be the case. He was barely on the fifth floor before he spotted the tracks of the last couple patrols as well an accurate estimate of how long ago the last patrol was and how often they patrolled.

A useful thing as it lets him know that the kobolds are due back any moment. While the kobolds won’t be entering the safe room, that doesn’t stop them from waiting just outside for the party to leave so Jim gets everyone back through the portal to the fourth floor. Annoying for Doyle as it led to him watching them just wait around for about half an hour. They hadn’t even been gone from the fourth floor long enough for the monsters to repopulate.

It worked, though. About ten minutes before they re-enter the floor, a patrol went by and not just any patrol but rather a very annoying one. Of course, every patrol has a healer with them but this one was special. The patrol they just missed though had a double whammy of two healers and the second one was the boss’s companion. To pile it on even more, the boss had ensouled the healers and his companions.

This allowed them to use the soul stats and excellent Karma progression. An important addition as Karma allows healers to more easily heal their friends as well as increase the distance at which they can heal said friends. Not the most useful for a healer in a hospital or church, but amazing for a healer in a party.

Jim and the others are, of course ignorant of this. Or at least should be and yet Jim seemed to have known something. The way he examined the tracks and the knowing look raises Doyle’s hackles. Not that he can do anything about it at the moment.

While Doyle was worrying himself, Jim’s party had begun to explore the floor. Already knowing that the center is a large room they have moved along the edge to map the layout. An act that lifts Doyle’s mood as the week is almost up and the floor is going to change again. That and the fact that the kobolds just dug tunnels however they wanted so there are a lot of hallways that randomly end.

Then halfway around the edge of the floor, Jim and his party reach a point where no tunnels directly continue the path. To finish circling the floor, they would have to enter the center room. Doyle would have loved for them to try that, but Jim isn’t an idiot. Being so far from the portal means there is a very real chance that if they get into a fight, their way out would become blocked by another group of kobolds.

Back at the entrance Jim begins to work. It seems that his time in the forest wasn’t just used to improve his direct combat ability. The kobolds on the boss floor hadn’t even gathered enough energy to place down traps and here Jim is laying out a variety of them. Though the good news is that he isn’t being quiet about it. He even pounds a few pre-system rock climbing spikes into the wall to put up ropes for tripping and clotheslining.

With all that noise, the kobolds decide to send out the next patrol early. Sixteen kobolds and a stone wolf head out from the town towards the tunnels. They don’t rush but the group is definitely faster than the usual patrol speed. You could even call it arrogance on the kobold’s part. If they had gone at a steady pace, the traps wouldn’t have caught them. After all, it is sort of their specialty.

But no, they went into the situation expecting a fight like the previous one. In fact, it is the same group that forced Ace to retreat previously so they “knew” exactly how to go into the fight. Then the entire front row of shield kobolds tripped over one of the carefully placed ropes. The spear kobolds behind them are able to stop in time and the three dagger kobolds could have. Those three however did not, wanting to rush ahead for glory.

One of the dagger kobolds ends up upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Another tried to run ahead and ended up clotheslined. The worst off though is the last as an honest to goodness bear trap snaps shut. Of course, a pre-system trap like that normally wouldn’t do too much damage. Except, of course, for the fact that the normal kobolds still only have four constitution. Oh, and Jim had covered the teeth of the trap with specially carved wooden spikes. While the trap isn’t as effective as it would be if made now, it still hits above its weight group despite being mostly pre-system in make.

But don’t think those shield kobolds are doing fine. Their shields mostly protected them but three of the five have fallen victim to wooden caltrops. Worse yet, most of the wounds are on their head as that was the part not covered when they fell. Sure, they had bronze helmets but that just means what did get through, went through the eye holes. Jim’s careful planning and knowledge of the enemy has proved itself as even what seemed like randomly placed caltrops are carefully positioned to cause the most damage.

The only way this could have been worse was if Jim had used poison. And he could have. The only reason he didn’t was he considered it a waste of material. From his point of view, once the kobolds vanished after being killed he would get back all his traps without even a blood stain. Any poison used would just vanish or stay on the traps causing problems for him.

Of course, this isn’t the Jim show so while the traps are effective the group’s follow up is what really elevates the combat into a pure curb stomp. The healer kobold is the first to fall as Jeremy steps out from a hiding place and decapitates the kobold before the first healing spell is even half finished. This isn’t the easiest thing for Jeremy though but only because Kellinger was ready and had thrown down a wide swath of oil on the floor.

After the two mage kobolds manage to fall over as they try to back up from Jeremy, Kelly makes her presence known. Her spell finishes and the oil all pulls together towards the two mages, turning more viscous as it does. The movement only stops once it has all gathered on the two and solidified, binding them to the floor. Now, the oil is summoned so it won’t last like normal oil would. But it isn’t going to vanish before the fight is over so she doesn’t worry about the details and instead starts on her next spell.

By this point, though, the shield kobolds have all died. Bill and Tess made short work of them as they advanced through the field of caltrops with flowing steps and accurate strikes to the throat and eyes. The spear kobolds put up more of a fight as they were still standing and their spears gave them a bit of distance to work with. Just a bit though, so it doesn’t look good for them.

The fight might not have been as much of a blowout even just a week ago but everyone is advancing at a high speed, which combined with the kobold’s carelessness made for a deadly mix. As Jeremy is finishing the two mages, the fully geared kobold leader on her stone wolf decides that discretion is the better part of valor. Without even a look back, she rides her wolf back the way she came at full speed.

A terrible decision, it turns out as the wolf does a nose plant and throws her off as it trips on a sneaky bit of rope that had risen up behind them. But even fully decked out in bronze gear the kobold, one of the bosses companions, is agile enough to recover. A simple flip into a rolling fall finds her down the hall and back on her feet. And this time, running away works a lot better as no more traps spring up to catch her.

The stone wolf even manages to escape with her. Though not before taking an attack from Kelly. Luck was with it though as she had been preparing a lightning spell to take on the kobolds and so it isn’t as effective against the beast’s stone plates as it would have been against the bronze armor. So, with a loud yip, it scurries after its master at full speed.

This leaves Jim and the others to clean up. Quite literally as Jim has to take some time to collect all his traps. Though he is quite satisfied with the results. More than half of them triggered when he had figured only a couple of them would get used. About the only disappointment was how many of the caltrops broke. Jim can only shrug at this as wood isn’t exactly the best material to use. Most of them had shattered against the kobold’s armor and while metal beating wood isn’t as much of a surety with magic around, for the basic materials pre-system common sense still holds.

And while Jim is doing that Doyle has focused his attention on the retreating kobold. She wasn’t the only one in the group that the boss had gifted with a soul, but she was one of the five companions to the boss. And while she wasn’t working on a human level, she had improved.

The act of retreating when Doyle hadn’t personally given that option was a sign. A sign that she was no longer just another of his dungeon monsters. That in some small way, she had become a person in her own right. And so Doyle watched as she remounted the wolf a few turns down the tunnel. And he watched as she retreated directly to the town.

Akhier

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Also if you want to read more, my Patreon ( 160 and 161 ) has two free chapters, two more chapters for only a dollar, and even more beyond that for the early access tiers.