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Dungeon from the Void - Book 4 - Chapter 14 - Facing the Ninth Floor

Added 2022-05-29 19:16:02 +0000 UTC

The second to last room of the dungeon's ninth floor

"How many rooms do you think there are on this floor?" Elizabeth mutters in question as she walks up to a monster's corpse as it disappears and grabs her arrow after it falls to the ground. "Because twenty-four rooms is a bit much."

Sophia - finally having had enough of Elizabeth's incessant chatter - turns her head away from healing her own wound to say, "If you make one more unnecessary comment during this dungeon run, then I'm not going to cook for you tonight."

Elizabeth's eyes widen at that before she simply shuts her mouth and starts cleaning her arrow of the blood of the wolf it was previously inside.

"The necessity of the comment aside," Roland says with a frown as he starts walking over to the door to the next tunnel, "I doubt there are very many rooms left on the floor. Not with the strength these monsters are all showing."

A smile lights up Elizabeth's face at the comment, only to vanish again as she notices the look Sophia is sending her way. Meanwhile, Roland reaches the door and opens it, revealing a more extravagant tunnel than the previous ones.

Whereas the other tunnels were all simply just underground tunnels with rectangular shapes and stone covered walls, this tunnel has obsidian lining its walls, and a much shorter distance between the ends of the tunnel, allowing the group to see the door on the other end from the open doorway.

"Looks like you we're right," Faraek says in a gravely tone of voice before the group crosses through the dark tunnel towards the obsidian lined door on the other end, pausing only once they reach it.

Roland looks back at the group and asks, "Everyone ready?" Once he sees everyone give a confirmation, he turns back to the door and reaches out for the handle, slowly opening it to reveal a small and enclosed space, with thin tunnels branching off in three directions.

"What the..." Elizabeth mutters as the rest of the group tenses up.

"Keep a watch out for every tunnel," Roland warns, clutching his staff slightly and moving to the back of the group. "Unfortunately, my magic won't be of much help in tunnels as narrow as these."

The others all nod their heads as they begin entering the centermost tunnel with one of the twins standing guard at each end of their group, and Faraek at the front, behind the twin, encasing the magic caster, archer, and healer in between them.

Not even a full ten seconds into their journey through the tunnel, a click resonates through it as Anne's foot sinks into the ground. As soon as she notices, she jerks backwards, pulling the Orc along with her before a segment of the wall suddenly slams against the other side of the wall, blocking the group from moving any further.

"Damn it," Roland mutters as the others all express their own displeasure with the situation. He then turns around and says, "Let's go try a different tunnel."

The group then turns around and backtracks through the tunnel, only to pause as faint growling sounds can be heard coming from the wall. Soon after that, the tunnel begins to shake and the walls in two locations several meters away from the party on both sides of the tunnel close up, followed by two more locations opening up on the tunnel walls at either end of the tunnel. Meanwhile, the growling sounds only increase in volume before wolves begin to enter the tunnel on either side, along with one larger one. The larger wolf has a similar tail to the scythian wolves on the center of its back, except much larger than theirs', and with a darker coloring.

"And here's what we've been waiting for," Jake mutters as he glares at the narrow tunnel walls before glancing at his long sword. "If only the walls were a bit wider..."

"No time for if only's," Roland admonishes while raising his staff and pointing it towards one direction of the tunnel, causing a wave of fire to leap through his staff. The fire then leaps off of its tip, onto the walls, before stopping at the floor and rising up to make a wall of flames behind the group.

The party's leader then turns towards the other side of the tunnel and says, "That should hold the wolves on the other side for a bit."

Faraek moves across the party to switch sides as Anne stays on the opposite side of the group as the mini boss in case the fire wall fails. Meanwhile, Elizabeth reaches back to draw an arrow before grimacing at the narrowness of the tunnel. However, she manages to draw her bow back anyways and points it over the heads of her party members, in the half-a-meter-wide gap between their heads and the ceilings.

Right as she lets the arrow loose towards the larger looking scythian wolf, the mini boss lets out a strange howl that sounds like a mix between a wolf's howl and a spider's hiss and suddenly jerks the limb on its back forwards. The limb moves in a circle, with the claw leaving behind void energy in its wake that immediately fills in the center of the circle once the limb makes a full lap around, leaving the majority of the tunnel in front of the creature blocked off by a thin field of void energy.

"What the hell?!" Elizabeth shouts as her arrow just stops moving the second it touches the barrier before falling harmlessly to the ground. "That's just unfair!"

A dark expression crosses Roland's face as he sees this. He pauses in place for a few seconds as the wolves in front of the mini boss finally reach Jake and Faraek, only to raise his head and shout, "Deal with the normal monsters first, then we can take out the mini boss!"

"Right!" the others all shout before getting to work dealing with the weaker monsters. However, as they're doing this, a terrified expression appears on Sophia's face.

"Hurry up!" she suddenly shouts, startling the others who only understand her panic when they look at the mini boss, "That thing is moving forwards with its barrier!"

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