Scout Chief Gor kept giving me weird looks. The gobs were ready to enter a dungeon overflowing with Kobolds, a race of lizard humanoids armed with mostly stone weapons. Glittering scales from the hissing patrolling males easily revealed their position in the naked forest filled with fall colors. A band of kobolds returned from a successful hunt, hissing at one another while dragging a group of humans into the hole in the ground.
I wanted to get in there and start blasting, but a look from Gor held me in check. “Remember you are to stay at least three gobs or one Hob behind with your head down. If Blonca didn’t pull rank, you wouldn’t be here. Mage’s aren’t useful until we have the first two floors secured.” Gor said.
Some of the gobs snickered at my frustrated expression while I thought about how to use the thunder shock spell on my wand. All spells were most effective when given the form of a shape like an animal. My problem was time I didn’t have the time to study a large animal and experiment with shaping my wand to cast thunder shocks. So, I worked with crickets, grasshoppers, and roaches instead whenever I had the chance. In a month, I was able to cast a single roach at a time with some effort. With my perk, it automatically became two.
The goblin mage in our group could create three fire sparrows per cast that dive-bombed targets. Not only that, his cast speed was incredible. He could string three sets of fire sparrows and have them all dive bomb or harass targets. Compared to his fire sparrow spell, my wand-created thunder roach spell was pathetic. That didn’t go into the alerting sound the roach made when it discharged. Just one might alert the entire dungeon.
My presence added a singular advantage: drops. With my presence, every kobold defeated in the dungeon had a chance to drop coins, gear, and spell scrolls. If I didn’t contribute, it was likely the party wouldn’t get much value until they made it to the lower floors where chests appeared. Maybe this would inspire some pride in me if I wasn’t so useless.
While wearing my gear I barely moved faster than I did before I met Black Rei. That made me a liability in combat. One of the Hobs Blade suggested I spar with him. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to use such a weapon besides sticking them with the pointy end.
I was a peasant not too long ago, and as an alchemist, I was rather mediocre. My growing stats didn’t mean much when I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag.
The cursed gear needed to go, and the only way to do that was to break it. Unfortunately, it was self-repairing. When I tried to damage it myself, the gear stopped me. Others didn’t have the strength to use the piece of metal I found to damage it. On the bright side, I didn’t add any new gear on top of what I already had, so I didn’t look like an oversized meatball. If that were the case, I would die of embarrassment.
The only way out of my predicament seemed to be to get stronger. Cursed equipment wasn’t insurmountable. From what little information I’ve been able to learn from my own experiments, once I reached 1000 in strength the gear curse will break on its own. The curse was designed to encourage me to reach the stat levels Red required.
“Concentrate. When we take out the lookouts, you will need to take out at least one guard.” Gor said.
I got ahold of myself and withdrew my wand. The stick crackled when I pushed mana into a spell as I formed the image I sought. A single-winged cockroach appeared made of blue bands of electricity. After the first one appeared, spending over 1000MP, I made two more, and they doubled, making six. Most of the power I used was wasted due to using a catalyst. The sparks of electricity from my wand were the discharge of wasted mana 80% was lost without a wand skill.
The twang of bowstrings rang out as targeted kobolds fell one after the other. I pushed my wand at a retreating guard as sparrows made of flames rained down from the goblin wizard in the back. My own cockroaches flew down, ramming into a kobold guard and shocking him to death. I felt a bit of the xp from the fight flow my way, but not enough to matter to a level 23.
Kobold lvl10
I saw one of the dungeon born poke its head out, only for an arrow to slam into its eye.
“Are we going to take any prisoners?” I asked.
Gor snorted. “Dungeon born take a while to break their programming from the dungeon. That could take months we don’t have to spare. Unless a skill shard with monster tamer drops, it isn’t happening.”
I took some notes and updated my plans in my system notebook.
Monster Tamer was a potential drop and a valuable one. It was a skill, profession, and a class. Those who gained all three could lead legions of monsters and often ranked up into the monster lord, light lord, and dark lord class.
It was a little tidbit like that I kept in my back pocket, just in case. There were classes Red sent me through teacher's email in my system that were patched. The chosen one was one such class only limited by the dark lord or demon lord. There were talks about someone gaining both the chosen one or hero class and the dark lord class to double their power. Patches were put into place cutting off the path to one when the other was already selected. Those patches were no longer functional. It was something I kept in the back of my mind.
My sister, if she is somehow saved from the King in Yellow, could qualify for chosen one as a profession or class. All I would have to do was figure out how to give other people system access, something I wanted to test out with Mos but restrained myself.
A tap from Gor knocked me out of my musings. “Pay attention, we’re moving.”
We left the ridge overlooking the dungeon and made our way to the entrance. One of the hob archers pulled a pumpkin-turned bomb out of his bag of holding.
There were two enchanters in Sky Spear, and one managed to crack the code on spatial storage bags. There was no inventory, but it did bring the weight of their contents down to a tenth with a house's worth of storage space. With the loss of adventurers, most of the technology human societies once enjoyed was lost. It's why I lived in a hamlet with an outhouse instead of a home with enchanted toilets.
That was the conclusion I came to after I saw a single human guard waving an iron spear. It was already happening, the brain drain Red warned me about. If that’s the case, then what’s a human to do. Clearly, the falling power would continue to decline, so I joined the rising power. That human town couldn’t even handle a single refugee; worse, they couldn’t handle a refugee with adventurer skills, levels, and perks. If that wasn’t blood in the snow, nothing was.
The pumpkin bomb was lit and tossed in the hole, and we hid on either side of the entrance until an explosion shook the ground. “Go,” Gor yelled as warrior hobs charged in with short swords, axes, and spears. I made three more thunder roaches, which became six and waited for the all-clear. Other gobs collected the drops from the ground, loading them in labeled special bags. So far, everything was going great. Gor placed his big green hand on my back. “Go,” he roared in my ear and I shot into the cave with a leather armored hob in front and at my back.
I watched the nearly 180cm hob goblins dressed for close quarters tear apart poorly armed and armored kobolds as they marched me through the narrow passage into the dungeon proper. 20m in, and my map lit up with 8 rooms, 4 unsearched. In a large antechamber fully controlled by the goblins, a large female kobold was chained up, and one of the hobs was having his way with her. I didn’t want to be him when Gor came through.
“Down the left hall, there is an unsearched room,” I said, and the hobs led me further into the dungeon. One took an ax and cleaved through a door’s hinges and, knocking it through before another, took a pumpkin bomb and tossed it inside. An explosion shook the walls, and the lead hob stepped in, short sword drawn and shield up.
Disoriented kobolds made poor opponents. A kobold leaped out from behind a bookcase, brandishing a club. Purple lightning crackled between my fingers before I lifted them and let the lighting fly. It wasn’t like real lightning; I sought to remove life from the kobold in front of me. Black clouds gathered up my arm before a streak of lightning lashed out. No metal caught the bolt’s attention. It struck viscously, completely unnatural for those who don’t know the rules of the skill. The Hob cut down kobold after kobold, and I fried one, shaking off the explosion with heavenly tribulation.
I learned more about the skill with every use, taking me closer to the next tier.
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