Syl

Chapter 184: Kobolds and Dwarves

Thern began collecting all the rock balls I had made for him and placing his glyphs on them individually. Once they were ready, he would put them in a small storage pouch he had that was rapidly accessible.

"These are pretty good spheres!" He complimented me while he worked. "If you ever decide to take a break from all the monster killing, you should maybe look into enchanting. I dunno if you know this, but spheres are pretty important with high-level enchanting."

"The way you’re using it certainly looks entertaining," I chuckled, hoping to dodge the question. "And I thought I’d seen it all with the damage-dealing healer."

"Now that sounds like a fun class!" Thern responded. "Where the heck did you see one of those?"

"One of the members of a party called The Misfits. We ran the mutation dungeon together. They had a shapeshifting druid, a burning barbarian, and a dark healer," I explained.

"Well, I’ll give them points for a good Party name," Thern laughed. "Now, let’s find us another tunnel!"

It didn’t take Thern long to find another one, and then we were again engaged with kobold defenders. Now that I had a higher level of [Earth Magic] and since we were surrounded by rock, I started using [Shatterquake] to explode shrapnel on nearby walls.

"Bloody beards! Was that you?" Thern questioned while slamming his hammer into a kobold.

"Yes? I wanted to try out the new spell," I answered while casting it again, this time below a group of kobolds trying to shoot us with arrows.

"Sorry! I’m used to solo fights."

"I can see that. You are like a one-elf artillery mage," Thern joked.

It didn’t take us long to defeat the initial defenders, so we quickly took a recovery break. Thern, of course, drank from his flask.

"I had no idea you could do that," He finally spoke up.

"What? You literally just took credit for my [Earth Magic] leveling up not even an hour ago," I responded.

"No, no, not that!" Thern clarified. "You’re casting that spell so far away! Is that a trait or skill or something? I know I’m not exactly a traditional spellcaster, but mine can’t go nearly that far out!"

"Oh..." I replied. I hadn’t even realized I was technically casting outside my Mana aura. "It’s not a trait or skill; it’s a technique that allows changing the anchor point of a spell."

"No kidding?" Thern asked, scratching his beard. "Wait... Isn’t that Mage Guild stuff?"

"Yeah... Jet mentioned something like that to me as well," I sighed.

"Don’t fret; if it’s a secret, then my lips are sealed," Thern reassured me.

"I’m not sure if it’s a secret or not... I just wasn’t taught by anyone from the guild. Jet mentioned it would be quite an opportunity if I wasn’t bound by any agreement not to share," I explained.

"I sorta understand. They’re quite a strict bunch, so they could take it as someone on the inside leaking their teachings," Thern said, nodding to himself, "Well, I don’t think you need to worry about any of that here; there’s no Mage’s Guild branch in any dwarven city."

"That’s a little surprising. I would have thought they’d at least have a branch in Dhoggurum."

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"Eh, it’s all bullshit politics. Don’t worry about it," Thern brushed it off. "Now, let’s get back to fighting some kobolds before they decide to close this tunnel off again!"

We continued pushing deeper into the tunnels. It was strange that we were almost getting less resistance to our assault than the first time as if the kobold’s attention was elsewhere.

I had mixed feelings watching Thern bruteforce his way through the kobold traps, most of the time breaking them with destructive force. Thinking about the time I spent with Whitney and Jet to disarm traps, I began to feel like I had wasted my time.

To think I was supposed to be the rogue, but Thern just breaks them... Maybe I’ll get my chance on the dungeon I do solo?

We finally met some real resistance when we were ambushed by a group of kobolds leading a pack of salamanders.

"I hope you’ve got enough [Fire Resistance]!" Thern joked as he quickly scrawled a new enchantment on himself.

"I dealt with an Inferno Salamander; I think these whelps will feel like a warm breeze by comparison."

Thern burst into laughter. "Good combat banter! I love it! This is the dwarven way!"

Despite the new enemies, things were going pretty well until a greenish salamander showed up and breathed noxious gas all over Thern, sending him into a coughing fit.

I was about to intervene when Thern recklessly charged at the thing and forced it to swallow a few of his rocks by prying its jaw open. The death of that salamander was shockingly gruesome, and even some of the kobolds began to retreat after that.

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Giving my [Sub-Cores] some permission to join the fight, I started throwing more spells around than normal to keep everything under control, feeling concerned about my dwarven friend.

I have a few healing potions... Shit, why didn’t I buy an antidote or something? I fretted, trying to think what I was supposed to do if he was fatally poisoned.

My worry became unfounded as Thern pulled out his potion and quickly chugged it after thumbing open the stopper. He made horrendous retching sounds before quickly washing it down with his usual flask.

"I can’t believe the bastards poisoned me," Thern grumbled. "Drinking a bloody antidote potion is never fun. I swear those alchemists make them taste like ass on purpose."

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, I’ll be good in a minute or two..." Thern grumbled. "I warned you to be careful and then look at me, letting a mindless salamander get the jump on me."

"Well, at least you got your revenge. By the way..." I started gesturing towards my chin and then pointing at his beard. "You got some salamander... Everywhere."

"Ah bloody beards, I got the giblets all over me," Thern said with frustration. "I’m gonna need a good soak after this."

"Quite literally, bloody beard," I said with a cheeky grin.

Thern briefly looked upset before bursting out with laughter. "Good one. I’m glad to see you’ve come out of your shell; gone is the polite little elf that entered my library."

"I hope you’re not implying I’ve lost all my manners."

"Nope, but you’re a lot more fun to be around. Although I wish some of your luck would also rub off on me."

"Well, there’s still more tunnel to explore unless they plan on collapsing this one on us as well."

"I hope not. But I wouldn’t put it past the bloody cowards," Thern grumbled.

I quickly harvested the salamanders, cutting off large parts to "harvest properly" later. Interestingly, I had to intentionally use [Dissection] as if the skill was upset that I was regressing in the rarity of materials to harvest.

Are normal salamander parts not good enough for you anymore?

Admittedly, I felt similarly unlocking the lesser profile when I already had the one from Inferno Salamander. At least it further completed my collection, and now I had the strange evolutionary interconnection from Kobold to Inferno Salamander.

Was the one I fought originally a kobold? Probably not; I don’t think they’re native to the region?

With Thern fully recovered and the hasty collection of valuables, we continued.

We were making some good progress deeper into the kobold tunnels when we came across an unexpected sight; another group of dwarves!

It was a relatively large party, although of much lower levels. They were currently fighting a large horde of kobolds at an intersecting fork. Thern wasted no time joining the fray and tossing a few unexpected, explosive rocks around.

Seeing their group under some pressure from a group of kobolds with ranged weapons, I focused on multiple big castings of [Shatterquake] directly under them. This caused the rocks to violently explode, killing some and disrupting the others.

The resulting chaos caused some dwarves to launch attacks at me, but I quickly threw up a few [Aegis] spells to block their barrage.

"That’s a friend, you blasted dimwits!" Thern shouted in rage.

"Hold your fire!" One of the dwarves bellowed to the rest of his group.

The rest quickly heeded, which was good, as Thern looked about ready to start bashing in some skulls. With both of our groups, it didn’t take long to mop up the rest of the kobold forces.

"Sorry about that..." The apparent leader of the group said, looking concerned.

"You better be sorry!" Thern shouted. "You just attacked a gold-ranker in front of a guild staff member. You’re lucky she’s got a cooler head than you lot, or you’d all be fried with lightning!"

Two of the older-looking dwarves seemed shocked, while the group’s youngsters looked upset.

"Ah! I’m so sorry, sir! Ma’am! Uhh..." The dwarf started stammering and apologizing profusely.

"Don’t tell me they’re going to steal our tunnel; we were here first!" One of the dwarves complained.

"Yeah... I’m so close to getting my next class; I could almost taste it... What rotten luck."

"Oi! You little punks sure have some mouths on you!" Thern said gruffly, albeit in a joking manner.

"Sorry, sir..." The party leader tried to apologize again.

"Na, don’t be lad. It’s all good," Thern shook his head. "We were mostly just blowing off steam... I’m sure we don’t mind letting you have the experience?"

Thern turned to me and shrugged questioningly. I didn’t really need much time to make my decision.

"I don’t mind. The experience is kind of bad..." I admitted. "Although, what about the evolved kobolds? We did stir up trouble earlier."

"Bring ’em on!" One of the dwarves shouted confidently.

Thern, on the other hand, was stroking his beard in thought.

"We could babysit a bit until the inevitable tunnel collapse?" Thern suggested. "It’s better than going home early, at least. Get to help the next generation of dwarf adventurers and all that."

The leader seemed thrilled with the suggestion, and most of the group did, although the two younger dwarves seemed disgruntled. I overheard some especially rude remarks about Thern’s use of babysitting.

I shrugged. "I don’t mind. Does it earn me some points with the guild?"

Thern laughed. "I’ll put it on your record. In case you ever want to join the guild staff." Thern winked.

There was some discussion amongst the dwarves, and eventually, they agreed. Both Thern and I watched the group leading the charge down the only unexplored path since we’d cleared out our own respective tunnels.

"So... Do we just watch them? How does this work?" I asked once they were out of earshot.

"Aye," Thern answered. "Watch, and if anything too deadly happens, intervene. If we spot any evolved monsters, kill ’em right away. Although I get the feeling we won’t be here too long, the kobolds will probably drop the tunnel soon, so be ready to help me with the ceiling."

I nodded and began my watching...

Some of me was a bit upset at not getting to train my skills or traits, but I supposed I would get back into the thick of it tomorrow.

The one benefit was that it was interesting to see a full party work together from the sidelines; I had always either been in the thick of it myself or the target of it.

Thern was getting surprisingly invested and often shouted suggestions or warnings to the group. There was even some praise or cheers at a well-delivered blow.

I decided to just watch in silence, looking for any good opportunities. The other dwarves seemed quite jumpy about me, considering they had tried to attack me in the tunnel.

Thern and I only needed to intervene once; an ambush with a pack of salamanders practically dropped on the group came out of nowhere. It got a little frantic, and while there were some wounds amongst the group, thankfully, nobody had died.

<Class Experience threshold reached. Elementalist is now LV 9.>

<16 Skill Points are now available.>

Well... At least that’s good.

There was a huge rumbling accompanied by the sound of explosions and quakes. Thern and I both jumped into action, hastily casting [Rampart].

"Everyone gather round!" Thern shouted. "There’s gonna be a lot of digging in the future."

A few breaths later, we were joined by the Geomancer in the dwarf group. He recovered from his shock and helped create earthen pillars to support our makeshift structure.

Thern looked at him and smirked. "Lad, I hope you have [Sand Pit], or I’m going to be a very grumpy dwarf."