As i stepped foot into the 30th level, i had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and that was the scent of… humans. I had no doubt that we were the fastest group to make it down here, and there couldn’t possibly be anyone in front of us.
“Is something the matter?” Anastasia asked as she saw me looking around warily.
“I don’t think so, lets keep moving.”
Picking up the pace, we soon approached the boss room. But as we got closer to the door, the scent became stronger.
“Stop, something feels wrong.” I brought the group to a halt.
“Well well well, look what we got here.”
3 silhouettes appeared from the shadows behind the wall. Walking into the light, Roland and his gang revealed themselves.
“Haven’t you leaned from your previous loss Roland? You think a couple more people are gonna change the outcome?”
“Hahahahaha, who says we are gonna fight you? Princess come here, we don’t want to hurt you.”
“No! I would rather stay with them than with you jerks!”
“Suit yourselves then.” Roland then crackled like a madman.
The 3 of them took out something from their pockets which was shaped suspiciously like a detonator. He flipped the lid and waved his hand,”have fun down there suckers.”
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The world around me exploded into pure white. My senses stopped working from the deafening explosions around me. I felt the ground around me crumbling down and suddenly felt a sense of weightlessness.
A few seconds later, after getting back to my senses, i looked down and saw a the ground below me had opened up.
“Brace yourselves!” I shouted.
Although i would survive from this fall, i don’t think my friends will fair too well.
Quickly making a makeshift platform below us from the falling debris, i placed my hands on the platform and blasted strong heat currents below, trying desperately to slow our decent. I didn’t have time to care whether they saw my second element, right now the priority was to have as little injuries as possible.
Even though i tried slowing the fall, the initial speed of our fall was too fast, so i did not have time to make too much of a difference. Seeing the ground accelerate towards us, i quickly grabbed hold of Anastasia in a bear hug and braced for impact.
We crashed hard onto the ground, leaving deep craters. By my side I could hear a soft groan from Anastasia. Parzival was laying on the ground motionless.
“Yo-you can let me go now,” she said timidly from inside my bear hug, her face a deep shade of red.
I slowly loosened my hold over her and let go. Every time i tried moving a muscle, it screamed in pain. I laid there breathing heavily, catching my breath.
Suddenly i felt a warm glow surrounding me, i looked up and saw Anastasia with a golden ball of light emanating from her hands.
“Lesser Heal.” She said. “This is the least i can do for you after you saved me.”
“Thanks, but i’ll be fine, check up on Parzival, he doesn’t look so well.”
After she left, i took a quick scan of my surroundings, and found out that we had landed on the 50th floor of the dungeon. I didn’t think things would get any worse, but soon i heard the loudest wailing sound ever, it sounded like the entire dungeon was trembling in rage and pain.
Normally we would descend the dungeon one level at a time, but now that the dungeon found out someone had blasted a giant hole through its floors, it was enraged. Although dungeons are not sentient beings, they are very similar to a system. When someone hacks or send a virus into a system, it would do all it can to flush it out, sending defenders to clear it. And much like what was happening, the dungeon was doing exactly that.
The sound was faint at first, but gradually it became increasingly louder, the stomping of thousands of monsters.
“Eric, what’s going on, why is there so much noise,” Anastasia said with a scared look.
“Do you want the bad news or the good news first?.”
“The good news of course.”
“The good news is that there is a buffet coming,” i said salivating.
“A what?!”
“And the bad news is, there is a monster horde coming, and it won’t stop till we kill them all.”
“WHAT WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT FIRST!”
“Well erm, you didn’t ask-“
“We are all doomed aren’t we, how many of them are coming?”
“Give or take a few thousand,” i said nonchalantly.
At this point, she was almost close to hyperventilating. I had to pat her on the head to calm her down. I went to Parzival to check up on him, it seems like he landed on his head, so he will be out for a while.
“Now what i’m about to show you is a secret okay? You mustn’t tell this to anyone, at least for now.”
She nodded her head vigorously, her nerves jiggly from all the adrenaline. I conjured up a ball of blue flames and her mouth opened almost comically.
“You are a dual elementalist too? Why are you hiding it?”
“Well i have my reasons, now lets focus on what’s coming, the horde is gonna arrive in about 15 minutes, so what i want you to do now is to freeze the entire area around us so that it’ll slow them down.”
I then thought about the many ways i can deal with the horde, and i went with the one i can do most easily, and that is to make the space narrower, so that lesser monsters can pass through at a time. I proceeded to create walls on each side of the cavern and reinforced them, then i sat on a nearby rock and made a fireball.
It started off with an orange flame the size of a basketball, but gradually it got hotter the more i condensed it. It went from orange to blue, green then purple. In the end it became the size of my palm. This super condensed ball of flame was so hot, that even Anastasia was sweating from a distance away. The fireball, or shall i call it mini fireball, was now in a solid shape that not even a lick of flames was escaping it.
“What are you going to do with that?” Anastasia asked.
“Oh you’ll see alright,” i said with a wicked grin.
Preparations all ready, we turned and face the approaching horde.
