Chapter 129 Gluttony
Third Person Point of View
The team split up; several of the girls went down side paths, exploring along the way, while the main group was reduced to four. Cherry, Sophia, Delilah, and Olivia were the main group pushing forward while everyone else was off scouting or doing their own thing.
The four were more than enough to deal with anything that popped up, even a raid boss if the dungeon created them, akin to what Tems did to the previous one on the beach. It wouldn’t be as one-sided as killing it in a single stroke, but the four could whittle down an army by themselves if one appeared. But it didn’t, and probably wouldn’t, without someone scouting ahead coming back to alert them beforehand.
“Man, I’m kind of getting sick of exploring these dungeons. I thought they were going to be more dangerous than this.” Sophia kicked a pile of rocks as they made their way down a mountain. Olivia chimed in. “These dungeons would be strong enough to kill an army; we’re just that strong now, So-So. If something is dangerous to us, it would be a kingdom-level threat, which isn’t what we want to see.”
“I know, it’s just so boring.” Even traversing the land would be a threat to most groups, but the four of them were easily climbing down the seventy-degree slope as if it were flat land. No, even then, they would be moving down it faster than someone could walk. What would be a deadly risk for others was a casual nuisance to them.
“Well, at least we’re getting some quality time with Dan; we’re all so busy now it’s hard for us to all get away like the old days. This trip really reminds me of the last time we entered the dungeons. Except even more fun because we don’t have a bunch of stupid party members getting themselves killed constantly.” Cherry was the most likely to need help, but even she was able to talk casually while sliding down the mountain, landing on different clusters of rocks to slow her descent before jumping down again.
They made it to the bottom with no real difficulty; it was just as easy for them to climb up the other side. Most adventurer groups would have had to go around, or painstakingly scale the mountain, slowly climbing up it instead of jumping up as if it were nothing. “Ugh, I got a rock in my shoe. Wait a minute.” They waited for Delilah to lean over and tilt her shoe over; the time it took to get the rock out was almost longer than it took to descend the mountain.
“What the heck is that?” The group all looked at a creature once they reached the bottom. It was large compared to them, but not giant-sized. About twice the height of a normal human, maybe a foot or two short of ten feet. The creature was hunched over, eating something with its back to the group. Even bent over, it was possible to make out its size, and it was far enough away not to be alerted to them, even with none of them holding back their voice.
Everyone realized the seriousness of the situation; for a person to be this deep in a dungeon, he had to be strong. Well… Everyone, except one person. Sophia began to call out to him. “Sir! What are you doing out here? Do you need any help?” The creature stopped whatever it was doing; for a few seconds it remained still, until it finally turned toward them and revealed what was really happening.
The creature was a troll with a giant hole in its chest, blood covering most of the front of the creature as freshly chewed flesh fell into its stomach before it rolled out of its frontal wound. It had a slightly fearful look on its face until it realized the people were human; then it turned into a smile. “People. Real people for me to consume!”
It moved fast, faster than something that big had any right to. The entire group's eyebrows raised in surprise at the sight before they prepared for the troll to reach them. Sophia took a few steps forward, ready to greet his blows before she’d retaliate. Sophia and the troll swung at each other at the same time, but the expected happened.
The powerfully enchanted sword cleaved halfway through the troll's arm before catching on a bone and causing it to shatter, but after the expected outcome, something no one except the troll could have predicted happened. The troll ignored the injury, instead using the force of the blow to swing its body around, allowing it to attack even more powerfully with its other arm.
If Sophia didn’t have the shield, she might have been taken down in that single blow, but because she was the most defensive out of the four women there, she tanked it. The blow was strong enough to push her back as the troll's arm snapped back into place, the torn flesh visibly healing as it completely ignored defense and focused solely on offense.
Sophia met him blow for blow, every swing of her sword digging in while she shield tanked the blows that would have made it through if she didn’t have it. Everyone watched on in shock before Sophia yelled out. “Uhh, a little help, guys!” All hell broke loose after that.
Olivia launched, throwing knives stored in her storage, staying away from the creature who could push their tank back as Delilah moved to the side to intercept with a heavy blow, hopefully slowing him down enough to start piling on damage faster than it could heal. Cherry stayed back now, looking for any weakness and trying to find the perfect time to launch a fireball without splash damage to her own allies.
The creature had no right to be that strong, but it was a mixture of things that let it happen. One, the creature was a troll; trolls were known for their regeneration capability, and the creature had an even greater regeneration than a normal troll ever would. The second was that it was undead; they were more resilient than people, he couldn’t feel the pain happening to his body, and had developed a fighting style that was purely offensive in nature, even using blows against him to his own advantage if given the chance.
The third was that there were no high-damage dealers in the group. As strong as everyone was, none of them were offensive damage classes. Tems could have cleaved his head from his shoulders, then his arms and legs, ripping out his heart for good measure if he kept healing before he could do anything. Leaf’s charged arrow would render him mostly paste; even Silk could make quick work of him, but Sofia was the tank while the rest were non-combat classes.
But, at the same time… It wasn’t strong enough to beat Sophia’s defense; she could block the creature all day, and it was too stupid by itself to go after another target. Slowly, its regeneration started to wane. Weakening even more once Delilah landed a solid blow against it, and Cherry struck it with a fireball, slowing it down even more.
The creature wasn’t designed to fight head-on like this; it was designed to be told who to attack, to suicidally charge through the group and take out the squishies, whoever was leading him pointed out, but that wasn’t what happened. Another extremely strong enemy, a part of a larger group designed to kill every group, was removed. All because it was too stupid not to just bash away at the first target placed in front of it until it died.
Even then, the girls were all breathing heavily. The first real threat was slain, and thankfully, Sophia got the hard fight she wanted as Tems and Danny approached from the mountain. “Whoa, what the heck is that thing? Wow, that’s a gnarly stomach wound.” Cherry chimed in next. “Where the heck were you? If there were more than one of these things, we might have been in trouble.”
He looked sheepish, trying to make up a reason before just stating the truth. “Well, we were scouting the… We snuck off to get a quickie in. At least everything worked out without us here. We’ll have to be more careful from here on out. This is the second undead we’ve come across that could pose a problem for the country if it makes it through the dungeons.”
