Apinsig
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Chapter 149 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-01-19 19:03:23 +0000 UTCMy entrance did turn some heads but most of them quickly got back to whatever they were doing. I looked around and the space reminded me of a debriefing room. To the right against the wall were tables full of food and some beverages. Most of the area of the room was filled with chairs of different kinds.
They probably didn’t have enough similar kinds of chairs as there were almost 50 of them. To the left after the chairs were a bit of a raised stage and against that wall was an item that looked like a blackboard, but it radiated energy and magic.
If my guess about this blackboard is correct, then I have truly underestimated this world's magical technology. I will need to learn more about that topic. After my brief look around, I headed to the table that had the meat slices on it.
I removed my shield and placed it to rest upon my feet well I ate. I wasn’t the only one that was eating. I looked towards the opposite wall from where I came from and notice that the entire thing was like a curtain that you could push to the side.
I moved slowly to that side of the room while eating some more. I tried anything that I didn’t recognize, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by some of the tastes. If I have some free time, I might want to visit the kitchen, could learn some valuable things there. I peeked behind the curtain wall and saw a training yard with an arena in the middle that was marked by a circle of huge rope. Perhaps there will be some demonstrations.
It seems that I had wasted enough time as I heard coughing and a loud clap coming from the front of the room. On the raised platform I saw a new group of people. I recognized the person that clapped from the descriptions I have of him. It was Tom the person that wrote me the letter. When he started to greet everyone, I was relieved that I didn’t recognize the voice meaning he wasn’t the one that was arguing when I was getting my equipment.
On the stage with him were a few other people one that was extremely heavily armoured and radiated to my best description the feeling of immovability. I was impressed by them all there were a few other fighters that looked extremely strong, but my attention landed on the small-looking girl that was sitting on the table.
While in the room there were quite a lot of mages, only about half of them were gold rank others were high silver but she was close to the second rank. If my instincts prove correct, she is one of the reasons that they were able to delve so deep into the dungeon I bet her damage output is insane. I could also feel some craziness coming off her meaning she was just that much better at killing.
I was surprised to learn that we will be delving in about 12 hours. Turns out that this dungeon works completely differently from what I knew of dungeons. From the looks of it, some of the people have already heard this lecture and I like that they are required to listen to it again. It meant that the leadership knew what they were doing.
From the context, it seems that every raid dungeon had its own rules and quirks. For this dungeon, you will get the chance to delve for eight hours slots and when the time ends everyone inside the dungeon is teleported out. So you only had 8 hours to clear all six floors to completely clear the dungeon. The maximum amount of people you could bring was 45 and if you brought a rank two person the challenge was ramped up by quite a lot.
I wonder what kind of limitation other raid dungeons had. There was a small pause as some wizardly-looking person was messing around with the blackboard. So, when it started to display an image, I was completely mesmerized. At the bottom of the screen was written entrance and then there was like a dungeons and dragons map that showed the upcoming dungeon paths and what kind of monsters we were going to encounter.
To the sides were bubbles with names on them but some were just symbols. It wasn’t hard to figure out some of the symbols as I quickly found the small mages and the symbols of the big tank. I also found my name inside a circle that was coloured green. I had to smile a bit at that as green was my favourite colour.
Then Tom started to explain. “Like the last time, our main tank Krome will be pulling all the regular monsters. When we are fighting the regular monsters only silvers will do damage. If I see that it's taking too long, I will call for the rest of the damage dealers to start killing as well but hold back as much as you can because last time some of you were expanding too many resources on monsters easily killed.”
I was in a group called M1 for this fight. There were six other people, and we were all melee damage dealers. The display changed again displaying now the second room. Tom also explained that some of the scouts will be clearing all the traps between the rooms.
The next room had a boss in it, and I learned that this dungeon was known for how many boss monsters it had. Every other room had a boss, and it seems that they all had unique abilities that changed the monster's behaviours completely.
For the first boss fight, I was surprised that I was moved from my group to backup tank #3. When that was mentioned, Tom looked around the room until he found me in the back corner.
Already knowing what would happen I removed my helmet so everyone could see my face better. “Backup tank #3 is Rich Dirt a person that I personally invited so he could lend us his expertise. While we have not reached this part of the debriefing yet, he will be one of the tanks that will handle the extra minotaur.”
I nodded my head and spoke. “Thank you for the opportunity, looking forward to a good fight.” I was glad that I saw some head nods and smiles in return and Tom soon started to explain how we are going to handle this fight. I was glad that everything went well and wasn’t too awkward. But I did see that a few people were frowning while they were still looking at me. I guess this is inevitable when you have enough people in one room.
The first boss fight seemed quite easy as it was just an oversized boar that constantly charged in a straight line. The debriefing continued and while I could see some starting to lose focus I did not. I absorbed every piece of information on every monster and boss that they had. I was glad to learn that every floor only had 10 rooms. On the third floor, the small mage called Luana was to start clearing all the trash mob rooms.
Apparently, her one spell could wipe out the entire room unfortunately the spell just wasn’t strong enough to work on bosses. Still from my understanding, she will be the person that will do the main damage even to the bosses. The third-floor end boss was supposed to be the first difficult boss. Because he was the first one that calls additional monsters to help him, and they were quite strong.
For this fight, I will have the first truly active role. All my roles before this room were if something went wrong or if more damage was needed but this time, I was going to do what I was hired to do, tank the right side of the room and not let any monsters get to our damage dealers. Tom asked me if I could handle that, and I gave him a thumbs up to which he nodded and continued.
One of the fighters with a huge sword and no shield was glaring at me. It seems he didn’t like how I answered or Tom’s decision. He seemed to have a huge problem with me, but I guess I just needed to wait until he couldn’t hold it down any longer. Then we will see what’s up with him.
I was surprised to learn that the triple boss room for which I was hired wasn’t the last boss room on the 4th floor it was the one before that. Apparently, this had been the stopping point for every raiding team.
When the fight was explained to me, I quickly understood why that was the case. The main boss was a huge dog with two heads. It was incredibly strong and needed almost every healer and buffer to keep the main tank up. If it was just that the fight would be simple, but it wasn't.
Technically there was only one boss, but the two other elite monsters were almost at the level of a boss. So, they needed dedicated tanks. But the problems didn’t stop there. If you killed one or both of the minotaurs the other monsters in the room including the boss will get a buff that will get stronger over time. And that buff wasn’t a simple thing. From the calculations that we were shown the main tank could only keep going for another minute or risk being overwhelmed.
That meant that the side tanks needed to hold the minotaur while the main raiding party dealt with the main boss. This fight's problems didn’t end there. If the main boss was killed the same buff would be applied to the minotaurs and then the same problem would start. So, my job would be to solo hold the minotaur but hopefully still do some damage to him so it would be easy to finish him off when the main boss is dead.
“If all goes according to plan we should be able to finish this room and move on hopefully finish the dungeon. But if something happens like the last time we will be retreating to the previous room where the monsters we were fighting will not follow us. Like last time we will set up our defences and hold the waves of weak monsters off until the time runs out.” Tom explained with a sombre tone as apparently, they had lost three people trying to survive the last time.
I was glad that there was a possibility for survival, but I was still surprised that we will need to fight until the time runs out. When Tom started to move forward to the next room I was expecting for there to not be much information but I was surprised again as there seemed to be as much information as for the rooms before.
Comments
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
