Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 49

I’d spent an entire night musing over how I could make this dungeon more effective for training adventurers. I’d planned, prepped, and modified monsters. One half of the dungeon was almost unrecognizable when compared to the five-room design I’d had before, though I kept the other path relatively unchanged in case someone just wanted to run a dungeon.

The space underneath still wasn’t developed enough to do anything beyond having isolated testing rooms, so I hadn’t bothered with it, but I was confident that I’d be able to make something like a shelter in the next week. Having that option would be critical if it came down to evacuating the townspeople to keep them safe.

Granted, none of that mattered if the Kingsguard were able to break through and kill my human and dungeon halves both, but I was banking on that not happening.

“You’ll notice that the first room has been near completely reworked,” I told Minus One, my voice level. “Part of this is to take into consideration the fact that you will soon be entering conflict against other beings who aren’t dungeon monsters. You’ll come into contact with other humans who want you dead, and you’ll need to learn how to fight them. The way you fight other people won’t use the exact same methodologies as the way you clear dungeons.”

“Right,” Rose winced. “I realize that I was kind of suboptimal in the fight against the Kingsguard. I need to fix that.”

“That’s what this is for,” I said, nodding to the room.

The first room had changed from a snake and earth construct themed cave into an arena with regular cover. Each piece of cover varied a bit in its height and width, so some of them would provide full cover if crouched behind while others would barely provide half cover even if you pressed your body fully against it.

This room was about to be populated with monsters, but I held off on it.

“One more thing,” I said. “I’m not going to reveal exactly what’s going to happen. When you fight a Kingsguard, you’re not going to get me predicting their every move. I know the dungeon. I don’t know our enemy. The dungeon can’t simulate people perfectly, but it can simulate uncertainty, which is where you must keep yourself from falling.”

“Got it,” Ryan said, drawing his sword. “New situations. We need to flow like the rivers. Never let the rocks stop the current.”

“Goddess, I swear you get more insufferable every time you go to the order,” Troy said, lightly punching his friend on the shoulder. “You can just say that we need to adapt better.”

“Precisely,” I said. “Now go. I’ll evaluate your performance afterwards as per usual, but I won’t give you guidance beyond some healing during the process of this room itself.”

They stepped forward and I unleashed the wrath of the stored monsters.

[Combine] had been online enough times for me to make dozens of [Displacer] combinations with the constructs and snakes alike. I wasn’t about to use them all at once, but…

Earth constructs walked out of walls and appeared from the ground beneath the adventurers. At the same time, hissing snakes dropped from openings in the ceiling, at least four of which were [Displacer Snakes]. There was a [Rock Snake] or two in there as well, but I’d made fewer of those. Finally, a swarm of [Mephit]s flew out from the walls, making their way through thin cracks in the wall.

“New enemy!” Rose called.

“Some of the snakes look different,” Troy said. “More powerful. Cover me while I check?”

“I got you,” Ryan said, activating his [Knight’s Shield]. “It won’t hold for long. I’ll need to support Rose soon.”

Rose started singing, and the battle began.

There were a lot more enemies than they were used to, and I had to admit that throwing it at a lesser party of level 4s might’ve been far too much. Three new elements—the [Mephit]s, the quantity of enemies, and the snake variants—added a massive amount of uncertainty to the fight.

Rose handled the brunt of the offense for the first handful of seconds, relying primarily on her [Song of Displacement] to throw constructs into each other and into snakes, smashing the mundane ones into smears of blood and mana against the walls.

She’d grown fairly reliant on that spell during combat, I noted. It wasn’t going to be a problem for a while—after all, she’d been able to affect an [Astral Monk] ten times her level with it—but it was worth noticing.

“Got it!” Troy shouted. “They have [Displacer] aspects to them! Don’t let them mark you!”

It was a fair assumption that they worked the same way as the [Displacer]s did, but it was a wrong one. I noted that down too. Little mistakes like that could lead to ruin.

“Switching to support!” Rose declared, tossing one more construct away from the three of them before swapping her song to a [Song of Mana]. “Ryan, Troy, hit ‘em!”

Their swap was seamless, I had to give them that much. They’d clearly been practicing that, because Troy started casting the instant that Rose stopped her offense. Ryan split off from the [Apprentice Mage], deactivating the force shield he’d had running in favor of passing mana into his magical blade.

The two of them made for a devastating duo. Troy had powerful ranged spells—he was primarily using his twin beams of [Manaburst] along with an upgraded [Thunderspark] that chained lightning attacks on enemies that were close enough together—and was easily picking off the small targets as Ryan went for the earth constructs.

The room wasn’t large enough for Ryan’s [Agility Boost] to fully take effect, but he had enough of it going along with the empowerment effect of his sword to enable him to deal with the bulk of the constructs arrayed against him.

It was going well for them until the new elements kicked in.

As Troy sent another upcasted [Thunderspark] out to fry another wave of snakes, the [Mephit]s closed in.

Without thinking, he simply casted the same spell. Against weaker enemies, his chain attack modification to the [Thunderspark] was massively lethal. At least a dozen of the little imp-like creatures fell around him, and Troy stopped paying attention to them.

Rose, the only one of them acquainted with dungeon monsters by virtue of her mother’s business, realized what was happening too late. By the time she got out a warning, the [Mephit]s were already midway through their detonations.

For a brief second, my human eyes were blinded as light and heat and blood exploded out from fourteen different sources in close proximity.

The detonations weren’t all that powerful on their own, but so many of them, so close?

When the dust and gore cleared, Troy was on the ground, groaning in pain.

Burns, blunt force wounds, minor internal trauma, lacerations. And that was what I could tell before I used [Triage] on him.

“Get back up,” I ordered, throwing a [Rejuvenating Pulse] and [Healing Stream] at him. “You can do it.”

Rose swapped to a [Song of Strength], focusing it on the [Knight] while Troy’s burns faded from his face.

As Ryan smashed through another pair of earth constructs, the [Displacer Snake] made itself known for the first time.

I wasn’t even sure if anyone other than Troy saw it. The snake’s movement was subtle, quiet, and it teleported nearly twenty feet with a single usage of [Displace].

A blink of an eye later, the three foot snake was wrapped around her left arm.

Rose screamed, a raw, piercing sound of pure horror, and the snake bit her in the neck.

An [Antivenom] was easy to provide, as was another [Healing Stream], but Rose was so shaken that she didn’t even try to sing. Instead, she batted at it with her hands, trying to shake the monster off.

Granted, it was still just a snake—not even a constrictor, at that—so it wasn’t too hard for her to get a grip on it and yank it off.

Ryan, weakened without the [Song of Strength] applied to him, paused and retreated from the last remaining earth construct. It took him a precious handful of seconds for him to disengage and retreat back to his [Bard] and kill the [Displacer Snake]. Before his sword cleft the monster in two, the snake managed to sink its fangs into Rose’s flesh once more, hitting her ankle this time.

As Ryan hit the snake, the air vent he stepped over opened, throwing him up into the air.

Two of the four remaining [Mephit]s flew to attack him as he spiraled through the air, unable to control his trajectory.

Credit to him, he managed to twist around midair and cleave through one of them. The other one missed his head and hit his armor, claws scrabbling uselessly against Ryan’s armor.

Rose hadn’t quite managed to recover from the shock the snake had given her, but she still managed to sing out a shaky note of her [Song of Displacement], sending the detonating body of the dead [Mephit] at the live one.

Troy managed to get himself off the ground, and the rest was just cleanup duty. With the capabilities of their enemies now somewhat identified, they were able to bulldoze through the remaining monsters without too much more trouble.

It took a couple false starts—Ryan nearly went down when a [Displacer Snake] distracted him enough for the remaining earth construct to land a heavy slam right at his chest—but they managed to clear the room in the end.

When they were done, their resources were shot. Troy had expended more than half his spell slots, Ryan had used two [Adamantium Strike]s to kill earth constructs, and Rose was still shaken enough that her songs were coming out at half-strength. None of them had come out of the room uninjured.

I approached them, painting a grim look on my face. They met my gaze with grim eyes of their own.

I let some of the tension drain out of me. We still had a week. For a first effort, this hadn’t been that bad.

“Alright,” I said, not unkindly. “Let’s talk about what we learned, shall we?”

___________________________

“I messed up,” Troy said. “Identifying its ability. Calling out the [Mephit]s.”

“You did, but it’s understandable,” I said. “Up until this point, I’ve been leading you through everything, holding your hands so that you can learn how to excel. Now, though, I need to cut back on that. I’ll be your guide, but I want to be your equal, not your superior. After all, that’s what we are when it comes to the Kingsguard. Understand?”

That got me nods from all three of them, so I continued.

“See, I can just tell you to expect the unexpected, but that just doesn’t work. You can say that you understand something all you like, but in my experience, you never truly gain that level of instinctually getting it until you actually go through it."

“That’s the main reason I informed the dungeon’s decision on this training room. When you come back—and you will come back, I hope, your lives are on the line here—it’ll be different again.”

“We’ll have to adapt again,” Troy said.

“Right,” I said. “And who’s best equipped to deal with that?”

Both Rose and Ryan turned to look at Troy, who looked a little confused. “Me?”

“You’re the one who can analyze what the opponent does best,” I said. “Focus on that. I see that the three of you have been practicing some of your maneuvers, and that’s great, but we’re going to need you to inform our response to the Kingsguard.”

Troy nodded, giving me a mock salute. “Got it.”

“Ryan. You’re powerful, and you’ve done nothing but improve, but you need to keep an eye out for your squishies. Your party is remarkably prone to taking heavy damage, especially Rose, which means that you need to keep up constant communication. You’re the shield and sword, and you’re uniquely suited to being everywhere at once.”

“Understood,” Ryan said. “You’re absolutely correct. I need to enhance my battlefield awareness.”

Rose frowned. “I might have something that can help with that.”

“If you can do that, that’s good,” I said. “Apart from that, Rose… you weren’t doing anything that was flat-out wrong, but I would say that you should think of switching up your songs more frequently and, more importantly, declaring when you’re switching them up.”

“I was a little scared,” Rose admitted, hugging herself. “Maybe more than a little. But yeah, that makes sense. I’ll do my best.”

“Good,” I said, giving each of them my best encouraging smile. “This is good work. Keep it up. Take some rest. And come back here. We need to train as much as we can, got it?”

“For sure,” Rose said. “We’ll be back before nightfall.”

As Minus One took their departure, I noticed a different familiar set of four coming towards me.

The level 1s that had utterly failed the dungeon, uh… shit, I still didn’t have their team name.

They were level 2 across the board now, which was promising.

A grim determination took hold of me.

Everyone’s being called to action.

And I’ll make sure every last one of them make their contribution count.

“Welcome,” I said. “Let’s get some training done, shall we?”