章 56: Underground Lich's Lair

Most dungeons in Epoch of Liberty were instanced dungeons. To put simply, there were multiple identical copies of the dungeon (called instances) that parties could beat at the same time and get the same rewards without interfering with each other. Each time a party entered the dungeon, a new instance would be created. However, it was still possible to enter other players' instances. There was a very brief window of time (typically a few minutes after the last member of the first party went in) during which an instance stayed open and could be invaded by subsequent parties.

Manco stepped in front of the hollow the group had disappeared into. Lifting up the "curtain" made of small vines, he noted that it was some sort of parasitic plant. Shrugging, he stepped into the dungeon.

〔Dungeon: Underground Lich's Lair #231〕

〔Another party has entered this dungeon.〕

〔Would you like to...〕

> 〔Start a new instance.〕

〔Join the same instance (Time left until instance is locked: 00:03:24)〕

Manco selected the second option and was immediately transported to the top of a spiral staircase made of grey stone.

Descending down the staircase lead him to a tiny square room that was almost bare except for a lit torch on the wall and an old wooden door.

Stepping through the door, Manco found himself in a small corridor. On the wall, a single torch burned weakly. A light breeze blew along, causing the flame to flicker and sway and making the shadows dance.

His eyes were drawn to the left, where rusted weapons and piles of bone littered the floor. These were the remains of animated skeletons, recently killed. Looking further ahead, he could see similar remains forming a trail leading into darkness.

'Alright, here we go!'

Following the signs of battle, Manco headed deeper into the dungeon. It was a series of rooms connected by tunnels dug into the hard-packed earth and reinforced with magic.

He didn't meet much opposition along the way. The group had done a rather thorough job of cleaning up the path. Only once did he encounter a single skeleton archer, which he quickly disposed of.

The tunnels and rooms were filled with the remains of skeleton warriors, zombies and other lesser creatures animated with black magic. Notably, all of them were unlooted. It seemed the group were either in a hurry or had set their sights on something else.

Before long, Manco heard sounds of talking and fighting ahead. Immediately, he slowed down and maintained a safe distance.

As he moved forward, he took the time to examine the map. He was well acquainted with the various map layouts in the game. This map was among the ones that had a stylized 'hurricane' layout. Three main corridors curved and spiraled toward the boss room at the center. Each main corridor had several smaller ones branching out from it. Some lead to bonus treasure rooms, others connected to other main corridors, but most would dead-end into empty or trapped rooms.

From what he'd seen, the group had been traveling down an unusual path. Normally, they only needed to stick to one main corridor and make their way to its end to meet the boss. However, they had twice veered to a different corridor and entered what appeared to be two dead ends.

'They're not trying to completely clear this dungeon. And they're not trying to speedrun it either,' Manco scratched his head, trying to figure out the logic behind the nonsensical path they had been taking. They also seemed to know what they were doing, so it didn't make sense that they would get lost and have to backtrack. The only other explanation he could think of was that they were trying to trigger some sort of special event in those dead ends.

"Alright, no more jumping around! We stay on this corridor from here on! It should work!" A female voice drifted to his ear, making him instinctively press his back to the wall. The small tunnels carried sound quite far.

"Got it!" several other voices responded in agreement.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

After dozens of tedious battles with necrotic slimes, skeletons and various sorts of lesser undead creatures, Morana stood in front of the large double door leading to the boss room.

She had been in this room enough times to draw its layout from memory.

It was a large room, vaguely circular in shape and about thirty meters in diameter. In the middle of the room stood a raised stone platform adorned with spell formations. That was were the boss would stand when he needed to charge his more powerful spells.

A stone walkway was suspended three meters above the floor, hugging the room's circular wall. It was supported by twelve large stone pillars. The walkway was filled with skeleton archers and mages. Before they could fighting the boss, they had to first get rid of those ranged enemies.

Finally, on the far side of the room was a throne made out of skulls, the boss' initial location.

"Boner, Galaad, you guys are up first!" the witch ordered.

Galaad touched BoneCrusha's shoulder and cast [Accelerated Metabolism], which increased his health regeneration at the cost of a rapidly dropping Hunger meter.

After that, he cast the same spell on himself. Then the cleric and barbarian took out their weapons. In the first phase, both of them would have a one-handed weapon and a large shield for increased defense.

The moment he crossed the opened door, BoneCrusha shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Hey! You dumb piles of bone! D'you know who I am? I'm BoneCrusha. Imma crush your bones. Come to daddy! Woo!"

'Thank god he's pretty!' Morana cringed at the childish taunt. Regardless, it served its purpose.

An inhuman screech responded to the taunt, letting her know that BoneCrusha had gotten the attention of most of the living, or rather, undead, things in the room.

Following the screech, a barrage of arrows and spells rained down on BoneCrusha and Galaad. Both of them crouched down and held their shields up to mitigate some of the damage. Among the six party members, the barbarian and the cleric had the most health and armor, making them the best at drawing fire. Of course, they wouldn't last long, but they wouldn't have to, anyway.

The moment the first wave of arrow ceased, BoneCrusha and Galaad rushed to the left. They stood behind one of the stone pillars and pushed it toward the room's center.

"Haaaaaarrrhh!" BoneCrusha, again, shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Come one, man! Do you have to do that everytime?" Galaad complained.

"Why not? It's fun! You should try it!" the barbarian replied.

Eventually, the pillar shifted, started tipping over, and finally came crashing down. With a loud "WHAM!" it broke into several pieces, raising a cloud of dust throughout the room.

After a brief rest to heal, the cleric and barbarian moved to the next pillar under the rain of arrows and spells.

Galaad healed both himself and BoneCrusha. Outside the room, Saarkas summoned a healing spirit to help out, while Morana used her own regeneration spells on the two damage sponges. They alternated between using spells and potions to maintain their tanks' hit points at a stable level.

After several more minutes, Galaad and BoneCrusha toppled three more pillars, filling the room was with dozens of shoulder-high stone fragments. This would give them more choke points to use when the fight began proper.

They had figured out the pattern during previous runs. As long as no more than two people were inside the room, only the ranged minions would attack. Also, four pillars were the most they could topple. Any more and the walkway above would collapse, depriving them of a safe spot to retreat to if things went south.

Morana turned and looked at Silent Death the rogue and Oneshot the ranger.

"Oneshot, Silent, you're up!"

"Alright!" Said Silent Death, who ran in and deftly scaled the wall with his daggers. His job would be to eliminate the skeleton archers on the walkway, then rejoin the group and help with the boss.

Without a word, Oneshot followed Silent Death and also climbed the wall, but much more clumsily.

"Can't believe I spent an entire week trying to train this idiot!" Morana muttered to Saarkas after Oneshot was far enough away.

"I told you he was only good as a place-holder," the shaman sniggered.

"Yeah, we'll get rid of him after we're done with this place. That artifact's wasted on him." Morana said as she and Saarkas entered the boss room. Both of them continued casting heals on BoneCrusher and Gallad, who kept drawing the mobs' attention.

"Ready when you are, boss!" the rogue called out to her.

Without answering, Morana lifted her hand and pointed it at a Skeleton Archer on the stone walkway.

[Fireball!]

A ball of fire shot out of her hand. It hit the undead creature square in the face and then exploded violently.

Immediately after the first shot was fired, the large double door slammed shut behind them, locking them inside. On the other side of the room, the lich stood up from his skull throne.

"Foolish mortals! Today, you will die and join my ranks!" He said in a low voice that somehow reverberated through the whole chamber.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever!" Morana rolled her eyes: "Let's get this over with!"

Galaad and BoneCrusha positioned themselves in front of Saarkas and Morana.

Above them, they heard sounds of battle as Oneshot and SilentDeath began cleaning the walkway of skeletons.

"Crush them!" The lich screeched, and dozens of creatures began advancing toward the group.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

Manco yawned as he observed the fight. He had entered from another entrance leading to the walkway and was hidden behind a rock in a dark corner.

There were 3 entrances into this boss room. The group had used the ground-level entrance, which put them at a disadvantage at the beginning. He surmised that choice was to exploit a certain path in the boss' programming and manipulate it to behave in a certain way.

The group's leader and shotcaller was obviously the witch named Morana. Her other role was to debuff and crowd control the mobs using spells.

The shaman called Saarkas had at least three spirits, a Starfish, a Wolf and a Direbear. She was responsible for short bursts of melee damage with the Direbear, after which she would switch back to her regular weapon.

The rogue called Silent Death was probably the best player in the group. He had the most difficult role: taking out the strong spell-casters that were supporting the boss. Quite frequently he had to weave through large groups of undead, kill his target, and then slip away to safety.

The barbarian was so-so, and did well enough. He had high base damage and several techniques with large area of effects, so he scored the most kills. The ranger was nothing special, only staying on the walkway to take potshots at the targets below.

It seemed as if they had been running this dungeon for a while now. He could spot movements that could only be described as routine. Whenever the enemies' formations had an opening, Morana would debuff the lich to make him vulnerable, then immediately turned to crowd-control the mobs. At that moment, the barbarian, rogue and shaman would immediately rush in to deal as much damage to the boss as possible, before retreating per the witch's order.

The only member that seemed unfocused was the cleric. On several occasions, he failed to synchronize with the group, which lead to small blunders and the witch's angry shouts.

All in all, they were doing an adequate job, though Manco could tell they wasn't trying their best to kill the boss. There were more than a dozen moments when the assault on the boss could have lasted a few more seconds, but Morana aways called the damage dealers back and stabilized the group.

'What are they up to?' Manco wondered. He still didn't know what their true purpose was, so he stayed still and kept observing. Also, he hadn't seen them use any of the Beta Gears either. But he had a feeling he would soon.