Chapter 3

  Elven

  Elven looked over the support team briefly before Dearth issued orders, they were various shades of nervous and excitement. Each member of the support team had the standard issue leather armor and combat boots, some of them had brightly colored mesh vests on that made them stand out from the others. Elven assumed the mesh vests were the members that would be prepping the climbing rig, in case they fell it would be easier to find them with the bright colors. Some team members had large backpacks, while others had large duffel bags that required two people to carry them.

  “Wulf and Chadwick, you two are in the back watching the support teams rear, the rest of us are up front with Elven a few paces ahead watching for traps or monster respawns and patrols. It was a straight shot to our destination, so there shouldn’t be any trouble but keep an eye out anyway.” Dearth stated to the group.

  Eostre threw up a salute in Dearths direction while Leoma just nodded. Elven remained stoic while Wulf and Chadwick started moving towards the back of the group, Chadwick yawning as he traveled. Once everyone was in position Dearth called out “Lets move” and Elven started heading back into the dungeon proper.

  The dungeon’s topside was a small collection of old, rickety wooden houses, three of them to be specific. There was nothing in the houses, they didn’t open. They couldn’t even be forced open, the rickety wood was far more solid than it appeared, however looking through holes in the wall showed nothing in the interior. In the middle of the three houses was an ancient looking well with broken stone bricks, no wooden wellhead nor bucket. There was a break on the side of the well facing the camp which opened up to a set of circular stairs which then entered into the dungeon.

  Down into the dungeon the two teams went, they traveled forward through the same fifty or so rooms that they had backtracked the previous night. Some rooms were made of stone, some of wood. Others were made of an odd flesh-like substance that had a terrible smell to it. That specific room was not pleasant to clear. After roughly half a day’s travel the team made it back to the Jungle they had left without issue, however, upon entering the jungle Elven halted the two groups.

  Elven motioned back to Dearth the hand signal they used to indicate enemies, it would seem something had set up an ambush after they had left the previous day. Elven then motioned for Dearth to hold position as he crouched down and slid into some brush, disappearing from the groups sights. Elven then circled around the area a good distance to the left of the ambush site and slowly approached from behind utilizing his *Stealth* skill which helped him keep silent in the thick vegetation.

  Once he was a bit closer he saw seven small Verfallen and what looked like a bull made entirely out of vines. The smaller Verfallen came in various shapes, none of them resembling a living creature to compare it to, some were made up of vines and some of leafy greens. One of them looked close to a toad if toads were three feet tall, had three legs and two arms with no eyes.

  Elven backtracked his way around back to the party to inform them of what he saw. As he arrived he made himself known and motioned for people to back up a little. Everyone shuffled back awkwardly bumping into each other more than a few times before Elven walked up to the front liners and told them what he found.

  “Seven small Verfallen and one medium bull-like one, the bull-like one looks like it might be some trouble.” Elven relayed.

  “Hmm, alright here’s what we’ll do. Elven you are on ranged support, hide somewhere to the left of the fight.” Dearth commanded, Elven nodded and slid back into the brush – disappearing once more. “Wulf and Chadwick will hang back with the supply team’s defenders and keep them safe.”

  Wulf responded with an “Aye” while Chadwick just nodded, still looking bored.

  “Leoma you are up front with me, Eostre you are our offensive back-line, they’re plants so lots of fire. Try not to burn the tree’s down though.”

  “Gonna slice plants to bits.” Leoma grunted, hefting her large two-handed axe up, while Eostre replied with a chirpy “Affirmative.”

  The voices faded a little while Elven got into position, a moment later he saw Dearth, Leoma, and Eostre advancing slowly, keeping their eyes peeled for the ambush. Two hundred feet into the jungle and the expected confrontation was sprung. The Verfallen attacked en mass, the bull-like creature charged out of the underbrush and straight for Eostre. Dearth let out a battle cry and banged his shield, activating *Draw Attacks* and gained all of the monsters focus, as soon as targets changed a torrent of flame in the shape of a small eastern dragon roared to life and bore down on the smaller Verfallen.

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  Elven grabbed an arrow from his quill and ripped off a few rapid fire shots utilizing *Precision Strike* which gave a hefty bonus to damage if they hit. Elven had a lot of practice with his bow and the three shots rang true, hitting the smaller Verfallen from the side, taking one down as Eostre’s fire torched them from the other side.

  Elven watched the not-a-bull plant creature slam into Dearths shield who held his ground against the charge as he fired more arrows at the back row of plant monsters. Leoma strode up to the plant recreation of the enemy of fine dishware purveyors everywhere, axe glowing and swagger in her step, and slammed the axe into the side of the aggressive vegetation cleaving the beast in twain.

  “Hah huh huh, nothing can stand before my might!” Leoma cheered and turned from the fight to return back to the group they were protecting as the mass of plants started to reform itself, reversing its direction as it did, putting its backside towards Leoma. “Head in the game dammit Leo” Dearth called out to the giantess.

  “Huh?” Leoma asked, turning back to the creature in time to take a back hoof to the side – denting her armor and sending her stumbling a few feet – blood dripping down her waist and leg rapidly. “YOU NO SMASH, I SMASH” Leoma roared back out, dropping her axe and levering a massive right hook at the beast’s backside. As the fist connected Leoma glowed while an ability of hers called *Salvation* activated on it’s own and healed the damage she had just taken.

  Elven let loose arrow after arrow, knowing his party could take care of themselves and focused on the back-line plant monsters who had started trying to pelt Dearth and Eostre with rocks and sharpened sticks, missing wildly. They might have targeted him with those attacks as well, except that with each volley of arrows he loosed an enemy fell.

  “Leo! It’s a big bush, your fists aren’t doing much. Grab your axe.” Dearth called out quite loudly.

  “Oh, yea – axe.” Leoma replied suddenly remembering she had the axe.

  After another few seconds the back line had fallen which seemed to anger the monster in front that was trying to gore Dearth and Leoma with its horns. Elven sneaked up to the fallen Verfallen that weren’t on fire and retrieved some of his arrows, and then sidled to a position what wouldn’t put his allies in danger if he somehow missed, he rarely missed but he didn’t want to take the chance. Once better positioned he took a quick glance around his surroundings to ensure that nothing was sneaking up on them and then started firing off arrows towards the plant-bull.

  The monster would get the occasional hit off by knocking Dearths shield out of the way and swiping with its twig horns or getting a rear-kick off on Leoma. Eostre was getting some good scorches on the creature with some balls of fire. Every third or fourth hit of Leoma’s with her axe was causing her to glow brightly with yellow sunlight that healed everything friendly that the light touched.

  Dearth was taking the occasional wound while Leoma healed said wound up. The fight raged on for a full minute or two before the creature finally lost it’s roots and slowed to a crawl, a moment later it stopped moving entirely, returning to life as a bush.

  “Sound off, all good?” Dearth called out.

  “All good.” Elven replied while collecting as many of his arrows as he could.

  “Yep!”

  “Yuh”

  “All good back here.”

  All these replies were chorused out at the same time, however one was missing.

  “Chadwick?” Dearth questioned loudly while looking over the support team.

  A loud yawn was the response. “Mouth was busy. We’re fine here.”

  “Anything else pinging Elven?” Dearth asked of his scout.

  “Nothing that I can see, all clear.” Elven responded

  “Good, they drop anything?”

  “Not that I can see.” Elven said.

  “Shame, alright Nell, here are the tree’s – the cliff is further ahead. We’ll take your riggers there next.” Dearth directed.

  “Ah, good work. You lot! Get to assessing these tree’s, you 6 come with us – we’ll go check out these cliffs and get to work!” Nell called out.

  Elven and the party started walking forwards again, past the thick line of tree’s and out the other side to the still stunning view of the waterfall and cliff side, tree’s still stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. “Alright, this is it. Look at that drop…” Dearth said, while glancing over the precipice.

  “This is incredible.” Nell stated, half dazed. “How is this in the dungeon? It’s far too massive..”

  “Dunno, not a dungeonologist, know we need to go down though, think you can manage that? It’s a LONG way down.” Dearth responded.

  “Yea, we brought plenty of gear, should be able to get you down and back up, probably set up a self pulley system.” Nell stated.

  “Great, we’ll leave it to you then.”

  The 7 members of the support team got to work, they pulled a significant amount of rope out of a spacial bag, pitons and pulleys came out as well. Nell and his team started with driving three long tent spikes deep into the ground to support the team as they lowered themselves down. Once the spikes were drove down the team rigged a pulley system next to each of the spikes allowing one to ‘sit’ on a loop of rope and lower themselves down with another rope.

  The rope itself was thick and of great quality, made from hefty fibers farmed from a dungeonous monster and wasn’t likely to easily fray or rip, perfect for this sort of activity. It took Nell’s team half an hour to get three sets of rope systems rigged up and ready to use. “We’re done here” Nell called out to Dearth, “We’re going to head back and help out with the tree’s.”

  “Great, thanks Nell!” Dearth responded. “Alright, Elven, Eostre and myself will be the first down. Once we’re secure we’ll send up a flare and you three can come down next, green for come down, blue for we found something along the way.” Dearth nodded to Wulf, Chadwick and Leoma after saying that.

  “Unnerstood”

  “Aye.”

  “Will do” were the responses from the three members.

  Dearth, Elven and Eostre each grabbed a rope, looped it around their waist and slowly lowered themselves over the edge while holding onto the other rope. They then started slowly sliding themselves down the rope feet walking down the edge of the cliff with them to help keep steady. This worked well until roughly fifteen hundred feet down when the sheer cliff inverted and a large cavern formed.

  The team repelled into the cavern, as it looked promising grabbing onto some stalagmites along the ground at the edge of the cavern to steady themselves and climb up onto solid ground. Elven was the first to hope out of the rope and helped Eostre and then Dearth get out of theirs while Eostre sent up a blue flame ball to explode upwards in the sky, alerting the team to an interesting find partway down the cliff.