My second life as a dungeon

When the raid started we were behind the vanguard and watched as all the goblins fell by the hundreds, we didn’t kill any of them since they never got within striking range of one of my spells. Even if they did we had to keep our energy for the important battle, not that taking down these weak monsters would have taken much effort for us now but we had to follow the strategy.

Pure chaos surrounded us on all sides but this wasn’t the first emergency quest we have been on so we were used to it by now. Some of us were more at home here than in a village or town where nothing ever happened. After about ten minutes of walking we reached the mines with only three parties in front of us still clearing the way, the others had either ran out of mana and had to retreat or were focused on fighting something.

Since this was the most fortified place in the colony we were pretty sure that this is where their leader was holed up. The parties that we were following used the mine’s narrow corridors to have their frontline form a wall that blocked any goblins from trying to get at the squishy backline before slowly pushing forward. We were quickly proven right as all the goblins rapidly got stronger than what we had been fighting before, all of them now being either hobgoblin warriors or hobgoblin shamans.

Even though they were getting stronger they still didn’t pose a threat to us so the four parties quickly pushed forward, deeper into the mines. The mine was exactly like any other mine, it was a square hole that went through the cliff face and slowly descended with wooden beams running through it to keep the ceiling from collapsing. Every now and then the corridor would have a hole where I assumed whatever they were mining had been dug out.

These holes ranged from small divots to full on corridors that branched off from the main mine. Each time we came across a new corridor half of the parties would clear it out while the other ones stayed behind to make sure no goblin slipped past us. This went on for a while and two of the parties had to retreat before we finally reached the end of the mine and saw what we were looking for, something indicating an area that the King might be residing in.

In this case it was a massive plain door on the side of the mine that stood out like a sore thumb. ‘This looks like what we are looking for’ Xorag said, he was our leader and an orc monk, he tended to rush into things a bit but that was only because he trusted us to bail him out if he got in over his head, he turned to address our guides and continued ‘Stay here and make sure nothing cam flank us from behind.’

Before they could even reply Xorag had pushed the door open and walked in with everyone following behind. I moved the four light sources I had conjured into the room so that we could see properly. There were no monsters inside the room but it had a massive shift from the mines as it was made out of proper stone bricks that looked better than anything a goblin could make.

‘This looks like it was made by earth mages, by the location and the amount of time it would take to make something like this I would assume earth Genasi.’ Khaldrea said, she was our dragonborn artificer and was always teaching us new stuff, whether we wanted to or not, if she wasn’t tinkering with one of her many gadgets. ‘You can tell because there are no markings that would be left behind if a tool had made them.’

‘Well then where are these genasi?’ I asked, a little bit out of annoyance and a little bit because knowing might help us figure out what we are fighting ahead of time.

‘Unfortunately I don’t know’ Khal replied ‘They could have left of their own free will; they could have been killed or forced to leave by the goblins. The possibilities are almost endless.’

It wasn’t helpful at all but I didn’t put it against her, she wasn’t omniscient. With nothing left to gain from staying here we carried on through the door on the other end of the room. The door opened into a long corridor that went on for longer than I could light, going down the corridor with their backs to us was a patrol. This patrol consisted of two hobgoblins and a shaman riding a worg.

I was surprised that they had worgs since I hadn’t seen any until now, they must have been keeping them back for some reason but I was unsure what that was. The worg is a huge canine beast that is bigger than the shaman riding on its back and was almost entirely covered in grey fur except the head and paws that were bare and left its brown leathery skin open to the elements.

As soon as we saw them I cast silence around them and my party-mates quickly took care of them before they could run and alert anyone of our presence. With the corridor cleared we started to walk down it, every so often coming across a door and checking what was inside, most of the rooms contained nothing but a few had some hobgoblins either sleeping, fighting or eating.

Each time we came across a new group of monsters we quickly dealt with all of them before moving on. They weren’t expecting us so we managed to kill all of them before they even had a chance to get a weapon. The general feel I got from this place was that it was a palace built underground as the various rooms we found were pretty mundane and what I would expect to find whenever we visited a noble.

After about ten minutes of this we came across a corner that turned left and on the other side of it was another patrol. They were easily dealt with and we moved on once again, after about half an hour and another few turns we reached our final goal, the goblin king. We quietly opened the door a smidge and looked around that room to see what it contained.

It was a massive ballroom about thirty metres long and twenty metres wide with four columns, equidistant from each other and the centre, keeping the ceiling up. Forming two lines going from the door to the other end was ten hobgoblins, all wearing ill-fitting armour and carrying a short sword, and four shamans that were all standing in the back nearest to the raised platform, they carried much nicer arcane foci than what any of the other shamans I had seen up till now were using.

These lines went to a raised platform that started to rise ten metres from the back wall before finishing about two metres later. The platform contained a single throne that was flanked by two seven foot tall hobgoblins that were wearing very nice, if also ill-fitting, dark steel armour and carrying spears. They were quite intimidating and I reckoned that they would prove the hardest to defeat out of every monster in this hall.

On the throne was a giant hobgoblin that I could only guess was the king we were sent here to kill; it was wearing similar armour to the ‘captains’ next to it, just without a helmet. It was slightly different to both the goblins and the hobgoblins as it had barely any fur on its head and its skin was blood red, everything else was the same to other goblinoids though.

In total it was seventeen monsters versus the four of us, if we had been fighting this many monsters that were all around our level we would have had to retreat right here and now. Luckily they weren’t and I had a feeling that each of us could take on four hobgoblins by ourselves, although we wouldn’t have to as we weren’t alone. We should be able to get through this fight relatively easily with just a bit of strategizing.

‘So, how do you think we should handle this Khal.’ Xorag said, he may be our leader but he wasn’t any good at thinking of good strategies so he left that to the rest of us, namely Khal.

‘There are too many of them to take on all at once, even we would get overrun.’ Khal answered while thinking ‘Luckily they have spread out quite a bit so we just need to kill them before they can reinforce the frontline. Xorag and Falmir, you two attack the close hobgoblins in a surprise attack, you should be able to kill at least two each before anyone can react.

‘While they do that Losdrick and I will get rid of the shamans, thereby taking care of the biggest threat to my plan. By this point the rest of the room will start reacting so, Xorag and Falmir, can you two retreat back to us to make sure that we don’t get overrun. After that it will be too chaotic for any plan to be effective so just press our advantage and take down the monsters one by one.’

At this everyone went quiet as they thought through the plan, no-one could find anything wrong with it so Falmir said what everyone was thinking, ‘Sounds like a solid plan, let’s do it.’ Falmir was a half orc cleric, and Xorag’s half-brother, sharing a father, but they were nothing alike. While Xorag was loud and brash, Falmir was quiet and kind of shy, sometimes I wondered if they were truly brothers.

Once everyone was ready Xorag counted to three before shoving the door open and charging through. I immediately sent three rays of fire at the closest shaman, who wasn’t expecting it and was hit by all three rays, getting reduced to ash. Khal’s metallic arm transformed into a crossbow that she quickly loaded with a red bolt before shooting it at the shaman that was opposite to the one I killed. Before the bolt even reached its target she had reloaded the crossbow and shot it again.

The bolts hit the shaman right next to each other, embedding into its shoulder and after a second exploding, leaving a crater where the bolts had been. By this point Falmir and Xorag had reached their targets, Xorag punched the closest hobgoblin twice in the chest with such force that its heart stopped and the monster fell over dead. He wasn’t done though as he punched the guard that was standing next to it in the throat, crushing its windpipe, but not finishing it off.

Falmir glowed for a second before creating an aura of small, leaflike creatures around him that attacked anything they could. That being the two hobgoblins he was charging at; they dealt a good bit of damage but didn’t finish off either. Once he reached one of the hobgoblins he used the momentum his charge had gathered to smash his huge hammer into its skull, caving it in.

At this point the monster's surprise ended and the room immediately roared into chaos as the guards started to charge at us. Even the king got up, the bored expression that was on its face was nowhere to be seen, instead only fury could be seen. It had been hard to tell exactly how big the king was while it was sitting down but now that it was standing up I could tell that it was easily ten feet tall, dwarfing even the captains.

I couldn’t spend too long staring at it as the monster started to charge us. We may have managed to kill five monsters in ten seconds but this is where the real battle started. The two shamans left simultaneously started to cast the same spell as a grey aura surrounded their king. It must have been some sort of buffing spell as the king got noticeably faster, they would have to be our first targets.

Seeing this, Falmir struck at the other hobgoblin next to him, the blow hit its abdomen and sent it flying into the wall where it crumbled to the ground dead. With no monster around him Falmir started to run back towards us. Xorag quickly finished the hobgoblin he had already struck before also running back to us. Once they reached us they both turned around before getting ready to intercept any hobgoblin before it could reach us.

Even though they had been surprised the shamans had almost managed to dodge our attacks so I could tell how nimble they were. Wanting to be sure that my spell would hit I gathered my mana into a colourless ball before releasing it. A second later a blast of energy exploded in the middle of the two shamans and they both clutched at their head before falling over dead, not being able to dodge the psychic mana.

Unfortunately that spell was my most complicated one and therefore incredibly mana thirsty so I only used it when I absolutely needed to. Khal then popped out a spherical gadget from her metallic arm, pressed it and threw it over the rushing monsters. Once it was over the majority of the monsters a cloud of acid started to fall out of it and onto the monsters.

Some of the monsters, including the captains and the king, managed to get out from under the ball before the acid reached them but quite a few were hit by the cloud. Two hobgoblins in particular got stuck in the cloud and were slowly dissolved until only goop was left. This was when the king and all his minions reached us, luckily they were down to seven monsters so Xorag and Falmir easily kept them at bay for us.

In fact when the hobgoblins reached us the leaf creatures immediately started attacking them, doing enough damage so that Xorag only needed to punch the two closest monsters once each to kill them. The king viewed Xorag as the most dangerous so he ordered everyone to attack him as he swung down. Xorag tried to dodge and parry all the strikes at him but unfortunately a few got through, luckily he had a high constitution so the hits didn’t hurt him too badly.

We could all see that the leaves would finish off the hobgoblins before they got to attack again so Falmir struck at one of the captains, the hit landed but it didn’t do much damage. At first I was confused by this as all the other attacks had done a ton of damage but when I took a closer look at the armour I realised that it must be enchanted.

As soon as I realised this I shouted, ‘Their armour is enchanted to resist damage, it can’t block all of the damage though so we just need to keep on hitting them.’ As I said this I sent out three dark black blasts at the closest captain, all three hitting but it barely reacted so I had no idea how much damage I did to it. Xorag focused on the same captain, hitting it four times in quick succession on the chest.

He used the palm of his hands for these attacks so that more force would travel through the armour and into the monster, this clearly worked as it took a few steps back before collecting itself and charging back in with a roar. The remaining monsters went to strike at Xorag again but the hobgoblin warriors never finished their attacks as the leaf creatures finished them off, leaving just the king and its captains.

The remaining three monsters still got to finish their attacks although they were much easier to dodge now that Xorag didn’t have to split his focus so much. He dodged the two captains while parrying the king, unfortunately the cleric was still damaged as the sword was also enchanted. With this new information the half orc shifted his stance slightly. Falmir used the attack as an opening to attack the weakened captain getting a good hit on its back.

Khal took out another gadget, this time it was a small rod instead of a sphere, it gathered energy around it before shooting out lightning that bounced from one monster to the next. It didn’t finish any of them off but it left the weakened captain sluggish and clearly on death's door so I sent three fiery blasts at it, this time the combined force swept it off its feet and pushed it back several metres where it lay dead.

Seeing that one of the captains was down Xorag turned his attention towards the other captain striking it four times, this time though Xorag released some energy into each strike the first one didn’t do much but the second one made the captain buckle at the knees before falling down. The next two strikes Xorag leaned over and struck down, using gravity to give it a bit extra force.

The captain slowly got back on its feet but his armour now had a noticeable indent, I used this advantage to strike at it, I took a step forward as I engulfed my hand in black mana and struck it onto the monster and syphoned its energy away, putting it back on the floor and just barely alive. At this point the goblin king started to get extremely mad, starting to swing wildly, the first swing was easily dodged by Xorag but the second swing hit him pretty badly.

The last captain was still down so Khal loaded a blue bolt into her arm this time before shooting at it, the bolt landed in a gap between two plates in the armour, only possible because it wasn’t fitted to them properly, and slowly started to freeze the hobgoblin until it was entirely frozen leaving just the king.

Since it was just the king left the battle just turned into a fight of attrition as we slowly whittled it down over the next minute before it finally fell over dead. With our part of the mission finished we found a side room at the back of the ballroom and rested there for half an hour before going back to the entrance and telling the party we had left to guard it that our job was done and now the vanguard could come in and clean all the remnants up.