Ashes of the Fallen

"Soon as yer 'ere," he said bluntly but without much care. "We'll take a breather while we wait for ye, don't take forever."

"Alright, be there in a bit."

A chance to explore the fourth floor was rather appealing, much more so than a trip to a farm to learn about animal husbandry. That stuff could wait, I was eager to give the fourth floor a shot, and if we were lucky, maybe even the fifth.

No one had reached the fifth floor yet.

I wanted to be the first.

Chapter 47: Fourth Floor

(Sunday, May 30th Game Day / Friday, February 19th Real Day)

"How's the mask?" I asked as I sat down to recover my mana.

"Not bad, never gave it a thought," replied Barik enthusiastically.

Not bad might have been an understatement.

The bandanas weren't perfect but they certainly helped.

My eyes still burned but my nose and throat were markedly improved, and now that we were clearing through the fourth floor which was considerably worse than the previous floors, I was sold on its usefulness.

It wasn't anything special, not even close to an ingenious idea.

Mainly, it seemed like I was the only one to jump on it.

Perhaps others thought the same thing and were already wearing masks of their own. No one else had been advertising it or attempting to sell and make profit off of it to my knowledge. Though I would need to check with the store clerk to ensure sales were being made, I had little doubt now that I could turn a small profit.

I had invested nearly ten silver coins so far, and if that turned into fifteen silvers by the end of the week, I would be more than satisfied.

Well, that could all wait for later.

"So, this AoE comp we're running, all according to plan?" I questioned somewhat sarcastically. "I'm almost of the opinion that we could run four mages… sorry priest."

"Hah, I reckoned it would work, didn't expect this much though," he answered.

"You mean clearing each floor in under twenty minutes?" I said, laughing to myself.

To think we had already found a way to power through the dungeon by using three different types of Area of Effect magic. We started with the fire mage's [Flame Wave], then my [Chain Lightning] came next, and then the frost mage followed up last with  [Freezing Rain]. Though it was a bit tricky to pull off, as soon as my AoE hit Barik would rush in and taunt them with [Call to Challenge] and then tank them inside the affected radius of [Freezing Rain].

It was an odd spell that did percentage health damage every half second, ramping up over time. The longer a target stayed inside the rain, the more damage it would take. There was a slow applied by the spell but it also needed time to build up, and the first two to three seconds were basically harmless.

Though, if one could hold a target inside for five or more seconds, serious damage could be done. By itself it was incredibly weak and hard to use. Even in conjunction with my one-second crowd control and Barik running in a second later, it was still hard to keep the targets locked together.

Well, at least the fights were ending in ten seconds flat.

It certainly sped the trash clearing up.

In an hour and a half we had already disposed of the fourth floor's trash mobs and were now resting before the boss. We had skipped the fourth floor last time I was here as the Aussies had to get some sleep, and from what Barik told me, the last party right before this one struggled with the third boss.

So, this was the heavy-hitter group Barik constructed to ensure forward progress. We were the best available, at the moment at least, and four of them were from the same guild. I was the only outsider, the not-so-random pug. Being the only pug was a bit of a misnomer though, seeing as the acronym stood for pick-up group, but that was how the internet worked. Language rules didn't apply to slang, really.

I had some pride in being a pug.

Not to boast, but I was a damn good find for a random.

I always carried my weight, and then some.

"Right, so what do we do 'ere?" asked Barik after everyone had finished recuperating. "This ain't looking like a piece of piss ye know."

I didn't really understand what he was saying, but I figured it had to do with the task at hand. The boss fight looked… rather difficult, to be fair.

"Same as before, she'll be right," chimed in the fire mage.

"You think you can handle two guards there, Barik?" I asked seriously, as I started to doubt if we could actually pull this fight off. The fire mage was brimming with confidence but I didn't share in his enthusiasm. The third floor's boss of one [Goblin Guard] plus three [Goblins] and one [Goblin Priest] wasn't that difficult but there was little room for error in that fight. Now, we had two [Goblin Guards], one [Goblin], one [Goblin Archer] and one [Goblin Priest]. The group composition changed, drastically.

Just the two [Guards] alone would be tough, let alone the rest of the changes.

I wasn't really sure of what to expect.