Chapter 44: Goblin Summoner Shaman

The air on the other side was warmer.

Not dramatically hot or something but enough to notice after the cool of Floor 1.

The stone walls and floor was darker here and the ceiling was lower and the light came from clusters of bioluminescent fungi hanging in loose chains from above, pulsing a steady green-white that made everything look faintly underwater.

The female wolf stepped through the portal behind Eren and immediately stopped. She stood close to his left leg, not hiding exactly but not moving forward either. Her ears were working in slow, separate movements, left then right, reading the room.

[Something is different about the smell here,] she said. Her voice in his head had a careful quality he didn’t usually hear from her.

“Stay close.”

The first room of Floor 2 was roughly twice the size of Floor 1’s entrance. And it wasn’t empty.

This was the first time Eren saw Goblins in 3D real life, omega real graphics….he didn’t know what to say. They were clearly real blood and flesh goblins.

The last creature he would expect here honestly.

They were arguing with each other and there were four of them. Short, around chest height with skin somewhere between green and grey in this light. Wide foots like hobbits but not hairy. Actually Eren looked at them again and couldn’t see any hair on their whole bodies except the hair.

Their hands were too large for their arms. It felt interesting but he didn’t understand the implications.

Lastly they had almost no clothing to speak of, a strip of rough leather around the waist on two of them, no cloths on the other two. Seeing naked goblins talk wasn’t good.

Goblins were better looking than Eren had imagined. Earth culture guessed wrong. They were ugly, sure but more stupid-looking than disgusting. He’d take goblins over screaming bats any day of the week.

And they were using tools.

That was what struck him first. Not the crude clubs or the jagged piece of metal one of them was waving around. The arguing. They were genuinely in the middle of a disagreement and hadn’t noticed four large shapes come through the portal behind them. Sharp consonants, repeated syllables, the general impression of someone making a very annoyed point to someone who wasn’t listening.

One of them shoved the other. The other shoved back harder.

“Are they dumb or just bored?”

Emily had her sword half-raised with her face clearly waiting for a good chance to attack. She didn’t seem to see goblins for the first time.

Cubs were a little bit culture shocked but even they knew the goblins from their herd.

The goblin nearest the wall finally looked up. It saw them and made a sound high and sharp. Their comical argument stopped immediately.

The fight was short, ugly and loud. Goblins were enthusiastic fighters in the same way bad karaoke singers were enthusiastic performers on awkward moments: very committed, but not particularly skilled.

They charged as a group.

Emily cut one before it crossed the halfway point. The female wolf barreled into two of them and sent them skidding across the stone. Eren put an arrow into the nearest goblin’s shoulder as it pulled its arm back to swing. The male wolf finished the fourth in the corner.

Total time: maybe forty seconds.

The room went quiet.

“Okay,” Eren said, lowering his bow. “They’re really not impressive.”

“Don’t do that.” Emily was already walking forward, eyes moving to the corners before the bodies. “First impressions in a dungeon are how you get hurt. Maybe it applies to everything. Even slimes can hunt and eat dragons under right conditions or levels..”

She was right. He knew that. But he still thought they were pretty unimpressive.

One of them was clutching something. Emily pried it loose a shield, round, roughly hand-sized, made from dark wood and hammered metal that had clearly been salvaged from something else. Two leather loops was put on the back and sized for a goblin wrist.

On the front, someone had carved a pattern into the wood. Crooked lines that didn’t quite connect but had clearly meant something to whoever made them.

Emily turned it over with genuine interest. “This is actually useful.”

“The goblin’s shield?”

“It’s a real shield. Crude but..” She pressed her thumb into the center and gave it a firm push. It held. “It’d stop something.”

Eren took it. The wrist loops were too small but he could fix that with leather wrapping and an afternoon of patience.

“Maybe I can ask Oldir for help. Or that pitiful Lyra can help to fix thi-” Before Eren could finish his sentence Emily catch his arm and tried to bite it.

“You are jealous.”

“We will see how I will punish you tonight. I have some ideas…” Emilt muttered quitly but she was serious about the punishment.

He felt threatened for a second but shrugged with the idea. He was open to all kinds of kinks and nightly punishment from this beautiful Elf.

What’s the most she could do to him?

They moved toward the next door and except the numbers almost everything was the same. Four more chambers. More goblins. Bigger groups, slightly better armed and by the third room they’d learned to spread out instead of charging in a clump. None of it mattered much.

Emily’s sword strikes and windy footwork found them before they reached striking range, the wolves covered the flanks and Eren was getting comfortable enough with his bow to hit standaing targets that weren’t flying and running in the dark.

He preferred this floor already with better lightning and larger room for safety.

Then they reached room five and he stopped preferring things.

The two figures in the center of the room hadn’t moved after they walked inside. This floor had five chambers unlike the other one. How he knew? Because this room had bosses.

Red Boss Tags on the air had crystal clear meaning.

The taller one the shaman had its staff angled slightly toward the entrance and the stone tied to the end of it was doing something to the air. Warping it, slightly, the same way a road shimmers in summer heat.

The smaller one held a hollow bone object in each hand and watched them with flat patience that didn’t belong on a creature this size or that stupid face. He looked calmer and smarter than base goblins Eren was hunting in the last four rooms.

The wolves hadn’t crossed the threshold yet. Eren glanced at the female. Her ears were flat and her weight was back. They felt something he didn’t…

Emily stepped toward them first.

The shaman reacted the moment her foot hit the stone. It didn’t shout, didn’t lunge. It tilted the staff toward the floor and said one short word in its own language and the stone lit up a dull orange from the inside.

The ground cracked.

Not explosively, hell no, more like something heavy pressing up from below.

Two long fracture lines spread from the shaman’s feet toward the center of the room. The floor buckled, tiles of stone angling upward, creating a low uneven ridge that cut the chamber like spider webs.

Emily stopped walking. Eren came in behind her and nearly tripped on the new terrain.

“It shakes the floor but don’t really breaks it.” she said before had her katana up. “Don’t let it cast again.”

The summoner moved at the same moment Emily loosed her first long range slash. But bigger goblin raised one of the bone objects and made a sound between its teeth and the air in the back corner of the room stretched for half a second.

Two goblins dropped out of air suddenly. They were around the same size with the ones in the previous rooms, identical to each other.

“Summoner!”

Emily’s sword delved through the shaman’s raised arm instead of its chest. The shaman staggered but didn’t go down.

The wolves run to the enemy. The female went straight for the summoner. The male cut left to intercept the summoned pair before they reached Emily’s position. Eren tracked the shaman with his bow, waiting for it to lower the arm and the shaman did something he didn’t expect.

It looked directly at him.

Not at Emily. Not at the wolves.

At him.

The stone on the staff pulsed twice. The shaman said another word.

Eren’s feet didn’t move when he told them to.

The control effect was new but he guessed it could be silence, or stun or maybe even freeze. He wasn’t sure how goblin shamans named their skills.

The effect lasted maybe a couple of seconds. Long enough for the shaman to pivot toward other warrior friend and Emily.

It felt really terrible standing still and pressure in his legs that make him feel like standing in wet concrete. He was relieved when the spell suddenly broke and his legs were his again. Eren didn’t wait. He shot an arrow imbued with Love Shot passive effect to the shaman’s side before it used the same spell on Emily.

The shaman stumbled forward and caught itself on the staff.

“I did it!” Eren was shocked after realizing this goblin shaman didn’t have any protection for projectiles. He was defenseless.

On the other side of the ridge, the female wolf and Emily had the warrior goblin pinned against the wall.

Emily crossed the ridge in two steps and closed on the shaman Eren was pursuing with her katana drawn.

The first strike caught the hand holding the staff, the second hit the joint above the knee and the shaman folded.

The room went quiet. It was much easier than the first floor. Everything ended in two minutes.

“I knew goblins were unimpressive-”

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 25]

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