System Escape, page 13
It slipped into the lock, a perfect fit, and he turned it. Not knowing what to expect after the last couple of levels, he was slightly reassured to see a normal staircase leading down into the darkness.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Rob stepped forward to take the lead, but Jeff slipped in front of him.
“Remember, we have found traps. I need to check things first,” Jeff said before heading down into the darkness.
Rob still had a light over his head, so he followed along behind Jeff, illuminating the Thief's way so he'd have light available in case he saw something suggesting possible traps.
Jeff made it all the way to the bottom the stairs and the door at their base before stopping.
“Not seeing anything, not on the door either,” he said.
“Alright then, step back and I'll take it from here,” Rob replied.
Jeff squeezed past the group back to his normal position as Rob prepared to open the door. He had his massive shield out on his shield arm and the other hand on the door when he looked back to Marc. Marc glanced around the group and saw them all paying attention before he nodded to Rob.
Rob pushed the door open and charged several feet through it, planting his shield on the floor and leaving enough room for the rest of the group to get into the hallway.
As everyone hurried their way through the door, Rob called out.
“Hey, I think you might've been right with your guess, Marc.”
“Which guess?”
“Well, this is just a hallway with doors. So maybe the dungeon didn't get to expanding this portion yet?” Rob replied.
Now Marc was in the hallway and could see for himself. It was a very long hallway, long enough that he could barely make out the door at the far end of it. There were six other doors as well, three to each side. One to each side was just ahead of Rob, the next two were midway down the corridor, and the last set was at the very far end of the hall.
If those are spaced properly for the rooms behind them, then those rooms are going to be massive, Marc thought. Probably filled with spawns also. We need to make sure everyone who has them is ready with AoE spells. The Area of Effect stuff might manage to clear us enough room that we can get in position right inside the doors. I wonder if these will be like the earlier ones, where the spawns from the other rooms charge out when we attack the first one?
He quickly mentioned his concerns to the other Mages. Ella just nodded, but Todd shrugged.
“I don't have any AoE stuff, not yet at least,” he said.
Marc shook his head, then went rummaging through the scrolls they'd found after the catfish.
“Everyone okay if I give Todd a couple of these scrolls to use here?” Marc asked.
The only one that seemed even slightly reluctant was Jeff, but even he nodded, although the grimace on his face told Marc that it was begrudging agreement.
“Alright, left or right?” Marc asked.
“Always go left, isn't that the rule?” Todd replied.
Marc would've rolled his eyes, but he remembered thinking something similar himself not too long back.
“Left it is then, I wish these doors opened into the corridor so we could spike them shut, but they don't. Whoever is in the rear, keep an eye open in case the spawns from the other rooms come charging out when we attack. Buffs up, whoever has them.”
Marc put up his own protective spells, including an Anti-Magic Shield since he was suspecting that there'd be casters.
With the group as ready as they could be, Marc gestured for Rob to open the door.
* * *
As soon as the door opened the slightest bit a wave of sound rolled out. It sounded like goblins and hobgoblins arguing and fighting, so Rob threw the door open and took several steps into the room, once again bracing his shield and allowing the rest of the group to file in behind him.
When Marc stepped through, he was shocked. What had sounded like a fight was apparently training. Lines of goblins and hobgoblins had been facing the other direction, following instructions from an overly large hobgoblin who was demonstrating weapons use. Now the lines turned, facing the group.
The room itself was massive, as large as Marc had feared from the spacing of the doors, and the spawns were packed in. The walls were lined with bunk beds, but the center had been left open, apparently for the training that was going on.
There was a moment of shocked silence from both sides, then the goblins yelled in high-pitched shrill voices and started running towards the group. The hobgoblins with their deeper pitched war cries were right behind them.
“Chris, Felicia, shield wall!” Marc yelled, stepping up alongside Rob. They had a few seconds before the goblins reached them and Marc took that time to rearrange people so there was a semi-circle around the door, with the rest of the party in hollow center of the semi-circle.
“Rob, pulse your Shield Wall skill just as they reach us. They should run right into it and maybe stun themselves,” Marc said. “That'll slow the rest of them. Everyone with an AoE attack, now's the time.”
Marc followed his own advice and started in on his Lightning Bolt spell. It was overkill for most of their opponents, but he was sending it on a path that would hopefully terminate on the oversized hobgoblin that had been doing the training and who was loping along behind the rest of the spawns.
A fireball exploded in the midst of the rushing spawns, Ella targeting the back line of spawns after hearing Marc's plan for the front line goblins. A massive snow ball went flying out after the Fireball, only to stop and explode into icy shards over another section of the spawns, Todd using one of the scrolls he'd been given.
Marc's Lightning Bolt went racing up the middle and did manage to at least scorch the larger hobgoblin a bit, apparently infuriating it since it picked up its pace after it was struck by the lightning.
“Alright Rob, pulse it,” Marc called.
The goblins in the front of the charge ran into the invisible Shield Wall and reacted as though it had been a brick wall instead, many of them knocking themselves cold and collapsing. Others, dazed and disoriented, went reeling back from the wall and, when their compatriots ran into them, started swinging wildly, thinking they'd made it to their opponents.
“More in the hallway,” Jeff yelled from the rear, “Closing the door. Don't open it for at least ten minutes, preferably fifteen.”
The muffled sound of an explosion followed the sound of the door slamming, each of them barely heard over the combat and cries of the spawns.
The fight quickly devolved. The group's front line tightened up, but there were just too many of the spawns so Felicia fell back to the center to heal. Derrick and Felicia were kept as safe as possible in the center, healing constantly, even if some of the heals were on themselves.
When the oversized hobgoblin showed up, it showed the same overconfidence that Marc remembered from back when they were taking the High School and one of the hobgoblin warriors felt the need to challenge Rob.
The hobgoblin had actually done them a favor, kicking goblins clear from a section around it as it approached. With the lightened load, Marc was happy enough to keep fighting with his gladius until Rob had engaged the Warrior, then hit it with a Water Jet from the side. He took a couple of hits from the smaller goblins in exchange for getting his spell off, but they were more of a nuisance than an actual danger, except in the numbers they were facing. It didn't matter though, as soon as he returned to gladius work, his body flashed with a golden glow and the health taken by the goblins was restored, along with some he'd lost earlier in the fight.
Rob took the hobgoblin out quickly after that, his ax smashing through the hobgoblin warrior's defenses and armor, leaving the Warrior with a shocked look on his face, briefly, before he was cut down with another strike of Rob's ax.
With their leader taken out, what little organization the goblins had been following fell to pieces. Marc took advantage of that when the goblins followed their natural instinct to cluster together for protection. When he saw them doing that, he took another couple of hits in order to cast a Flamethrower spell, panning it back and forth across the group before turning it on the spawns that had just attacked him.
He actually burned himself a little with the last part, some of the flames somehow splashing back into him from the goblins that had been in close attacking him. Even with the mild fire resistance from his spider silk tabard, it still hurt. That was washed away a moment later when, this time, he glowed purple and a cold chill invaded the wounds he'd collected, seeming to freeze them shut before fading away after restoring his health.
Wow, Derrick's heals feel a lot different than Felicia's, he thought for a moment before focusing back in on the fight.
In the end, they cleared the room and the worst result was that they had to spend a while regenerating their mana and doing some minor equipment repairs before moving on. They did clear the remains of the spawns out from the hallways first. Jeff's poison bomb had done most of the work for them, but some of the hobgoblins were still up when they stepped into the hallway to check. They didn't stay up for long though.
Jeff spiked the door shut while they rested and despite the occasional noises from out in the hallway, they were mostly undisturbed as they rested and regenerated.
They repeated the whole thing for the next room. Knowing what the first room had looked like, they planned for something similar. This time, there was no oversized hobgoblin warrior and the goblins and hobgoblins were lazing around on their bunks or crouching on the floor keeping themselves entertained with things like dice.
This time Jeff was waiting for the ones across the corridor to show up. If Marc wasn't mistaken, the Thief had even stepped out of the room with the combat just starting up to knock on the door across the hallway before stepping back in with the rest of the party. Once the door across the hall opened, Jeff had tossed another bomb into the hallway and slammed the door, spiking it shut like the last time.
More of the room across the hallway survived Jeff's bomb this time, but the numbers were only half that in a fully populated room and the party had no problems eliminating them once they'd regenned again.
The last two doors were similar and the only major difference was that even with Jeff knocking on the door again, the second room did not venture out to try to take the party from behind, meaning that they had go through the whole mess one more time. The only room that had had an oversized hobgoblin training the others had been the first and Marc had a sneaking suspicion that the oversized hobgoblin spawn had been responsible for training all of the rooms and not just the one they'd found him in.
At the end of the hallway, the door Marc had barely been able to see led to a very short set of stairs leading down and ended at yet another door.
Jeff took the lead again and this time he did find a trap on the door. When he tried to disarm it, it triggered, striking his finger with a small needle. He turned to say something, then froze, the only movement the slow rise and fall of his chest. At the same time, the door swung slowly open.
* * *
Felicia darted forward and grabbed Jeff, dragging him back up the stairs. Rob stepped forward and blocked the door.
“Tell me when, Marc.”
“What are you seeing?” Marc asked.
“Seven hobgoblins. Two look like that big buy, two more are wearing feathers, two have staffs, and the last one is standing at what looks kinda like a build pedestal. They're about to—”
Rob jumped back, cursing.
“Oh shit, two are casting.”
Rob slammed his shield down to block the doorway and hunkered down behind it. Marc used the near instantaneous casting time of his Anti-Magic Shield to get a shield up, then get right behind Rob and move the shield in front of both of them.
He felt the impact of the spells on his shield and it dissipated immediately. It did block most of the spells though and while Rob lurched back at the impact of something on his shield, nothing got through it and he stayed on his feet.
“In, fast, they're attacking already,” Marc said.
Rob rose and went to step into the room, only to find the two hefty hobgoblin warriors blocking the doorway.
“Rob, can you get your shield through the door sideways?” Marc muttered, just loud enough for the tank to hear.
“Yeah, why?”
“Go through together, you take left, I take right. Ready, set, go!”
They both had to turn sideways to get through the door together, but they each turned so that their shields came out first and were in place to block the initial attacks of the hobgoblin warriors.
“Shield Bash, then we get everyone else in here,” Marc yelled.
He matched his action to his words and his shield went flying out to strike the Warrior he was fighting. He barely staggered it with the first one, so before it could recover, he hit it with another Shield Bash, eating up a lot of his stamina to do the two maneuvers back to back.
The second Shield Bash took the warrior off its feet and Marc stalked forward towards where it lay sprawled on the floor.
Rob had taken his off its feet and sent it flying with his initial Shield Bash and now had room to unlimber his ax and get to the serious work of fighting. He grunted in pain as a series of glowing darts struck him in the side as the casters let out another round of spells. Marc nearly had his own problems with that.
System Message:
You have resisted the spell: Paralyze.
You are slowed by 25% for 30 seconds.
The brief reprieve given to the hobgoblin warrior by the slowing effect of Marc's successful resistance allowed the warrior to get back to its feet before Marc could attack again.
As Marc was moving forward he was pushed to one side, Chris passing him and taking the hobgoblin Warrior's next strike on his shield.
“I can handle this one,” Chris said. “You take care of their casters. Those would give me a problem.”
Marc placed himself between Chris and the nearest of the casters, the one he thought had probably paralyzed him, or tried to. His first act was to put up another Anti-Magic Shield, regardless of its mana cost. Now he could protect both himself and Chris, if Marc kept himself positioned correctly, from direct damage attacks.
Marc caught the hint of a golden glow washing over him and he returned to his normal speed. After a second flash of gold, he felt his blood speed up in his veins. He was pretty sure he'd just gotten the minor speed buff that the party had relied on more at lower levels.
Which is good, we might need the edge here, he thought.
He started casting and heard Felicia yell out.
“Derrick will have Jeff on his feet again soon.”
Marc saw more spells racing out here and there in the room. It looked like Ella and Todd were ganging up on the other caster, keeping it from interfering in Rob's fight. Felicia was keeping an eye on them, trying to dispel any debuffs the other caster put on either of the group's Mages.
So, I've got to take care of this one, Marc thought, releasing the Mana Darts he'd just cast.
He'd chosen the flaming version since they just seemed more intimidating than the normal ones, and they raced across the room only to dissipate on some sort of shield in front of the other caster that was his target.
He's shielded like I am, I could bust through it with my Lightning Bolt, but this room is small enough that it would bounce all over the place and I don't want to kill off my own party. So, let's try this.
Marc, keeping himself between his target and Chris, who was having a hard enough time with the hobgoblin Warrior, advanced on the caster. His shield absorbed another spell as he advanced, it looked like the hobgoblin caster had returned fire with his own volley of Mana Darts.
Once he was close enough he let loose with a Flamethrower spell, focusing it on the caster. The flames splayed out in front of the hobgoblin, intercepted by the shield due to their magical nature. Marc was hoping that its shield had the same limitations as his own, which was close to dropping as it was struck by another grouping of Mana Darts.
Before the hobgoblin caster could get off a third batch of Mana Darts, its shield failed. The Flamethrower bathed it in shower of magical napalm and the hobgoblin's screams filled the room.
Marc's ears rang as the roar of a shotgun echoed off the stone walls. He looked up to see that the hobgoblin that had been at the build pedestal had staggered back from it. The pattern the shotgun pellets had left on his chest told Marc why. He also noticed that the two with staffs were using them, bolts of light racing out of them to strike the hobgoblin Warriors, whose wounds kept healing.
Marc had his gladius in his shield hand so he could cast, but now, with his target on the ground and mostly helpless, he dropped the Flamethrower spell, took his gladius in hand, and struck for the caster's neck, nearly severing its head.
Good, even if those other two are healing with the staffs, I'm pretty sure this guy is beyond healing now. I need to help Chris though, now I understand why he's having trouble if they keep healing his opponent, Marc thought.
Marc tried to identify which of the hobgoblins was healing Chris' opponent. When he thought he knew which one it was, he took off at a sprint, shield in hand. He hit the caster with a Shield Bash while still accelerating. While the Warrior had stood up to the first Shield Bash, this Shaman or whatever it was went flying.
Marc realized that he was breathing a little heavy and checked his stamina.
Stamina: 572/1188 (+12)
Aha, the heavy breathing must be a warning that you've used half your stamina, or maybe that you've used too much in too short a time? I don't know, but I'm good for the moment.
Marc started spamming Mana Darts at the hobgoblin he'd just sent flying. The shotgun roared again, and this time the hobgoblin from the build pedestal roared in frustration. He was obviously trying to do something at the pedestal and Felicia was preventing him from doing so.
The hobgoblin with the staff was trying to get back to its feet, even with Marc hammering it with Mana Darts, so Marc took a few more steps forward and Shield Bashed it one more time. This time he stepped forward farther, brought his boot down on the spawn's arm, reached down, and removed the staff from its hand, dropping it straight into his inventory so the hobgoblin couldn't get it back.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Rob stepped forward to take the lead, but Jeff slipped in front of him.
“Remember, we have found traps. I need to check things first,” Jeff said before heading down into the darkness.
Rob still had a light over his head, so he followed along behind Jeff, illuminating the Thief's way so he'd have light available in case he saw something suggesting possible traps.
Jeff made it all the way to the bottom the stairs and the door at their base before stopping.
“Not seeing anything, not on the door either,” he said.
“Alright then, step back and I'll take it from here,” Rob replied.
Jeff squeezed past the group back to his normal position as Rob prepared to open the door. He had his massive shield out on his shield arm and the other hand on the door when he looked back to Marc. Marc glanced around the group and saw them all paying attention before he nodded to Rob.
Rob pushed the door open and charged several feet through it, planting his shield on the floor and leaving enough room for the rest of the group to get into the hallway.
As everyone hurried their way through the door, Rob called out.
“Hey, I think you might've been right with your guess, Marc.”
“Which guess?”
“Well, this is just a hallway with doors. So maybe the dungeon didn't get to expanding this portion yet?” Rob replied.
Now Marc was in the hallway and could see for himself. It was a very long hallway, long enough that he could barely make out the door at the far end of it. There were six other doors as well, three to each side. One to each side was just ahead of Rob, the next two were midway down the corridor, and the last set was at the very far end of the hall.
If those are spaced properly for the rooms behind them, then those rooms are going to be massive, Marc thought. Probably filled with spawns also. We need to make sure everyone who has them is ready with AoE spells. The Area of Effect stuff might manage to clear us enough room that we can get in position right inside the doors. I wonder if these will be like the earlier ones, where the spawns from the other rooms charge out when we attack the first one?
He quickly mentioned his concerns to the other Mages. Ella just nodded, but Todd shrugged.
“I don't have any AoE stuff, not yet at least,” he said.
Marc shook his head, then went rummaging through the scrolls they'd found after the catfish.
“Everyone okay if I give Todd a couple of these scrolls to use here?” Marc asked.
The only one that seemed even slightly reluctant was Jeff, but even he nodded, although the grimace on his face told Marc that it was begrudging agreement.
“Alright, left or right?” Marc asked.
“Always go left, isn't that the rule?” Todd replied.
Marc would've rolled his eyes, but he remembered thinking something similar himself not too long back.
“Left it is then, I wish these doors opened into the corridor so we could spike them shut, but they don't. Whoever is in the rear, keep an eye open in case the spawns from the other rooms come charging out when we attack. Buffs up, whoever has them.”
Marc put up his own protective spells, including an Anti-Magic Shield since he was suspecting that there'd be casters.
With the group as ready as they could be, Marc gestured for Rob to open the door.
* * *
As soon as the door opened the slightest bit a wave of sound rolled out. It sounded like goblins and hobgoblins arguing and fighting, so Rob threw the door open and took several steps into the room, once again bracing his shield and allowing the rest of the group to file in behind him.
When Marc stepped through, he was shocked. What had sounded like a fight was apparently training. Lines of goblins and hobgoblins had been facing the other direction, following instructions from an overly large hobgoblin who was demonstrating weapons use. Now the lines turned, facing the group.
The room itself was massive, as large as Marc had feared from the spacing of the doors, and the spawns were packed in. The walls were lined with bunk beds, but the center had been left open, apparently for the training that was going on.
There was a moment of shocked silence from both sides, then the goblins yelled in high-pitched shrill voices and started running towards the group. The hobgoblins with their deeper pitched war cries were right behind them.
“Chris, Felicia, shield wall!” Marc yelled, stepping up alongside Rob. They had a few seconds before the goblins reached them and Marc took that time to rearrange people so there was a semi-circle around the door, with the rest of the party in hollow center of the semi-circle.
“Rob, pulse your Shield Wall skill just as they reach us. They should run right into it and maybe stun themselves,” Marc said. “That'll slow the rest of them. Everyone with an AoE attack, now's the time.”
Marc followed his own advice and started in on his Lightning Bolt spell. It was overkill for most of their opponents, but he was sending it on a path that would hopefully terminate on the oversized hobgoblin that had been doing the training and who was loping along behind the rest of the spawns.
A fireball exploded in the midst of the rushing spawns, Ella targeting the back line of spawns after hearing Marc's plan for the front line goblins. A massive snow ball went flying out after the Fireball, only to stop and explode into icy shards over another section of the spawns, Todd using one of the scrolls he'd been given.
Marc's Lightning Bolt went racing up the middle and did manage to at least scorch the larger hobgoblin a bit, apparently infuriating it since it picked up its pace after it was struck by the lightning.
“Alright Rob, pulse it,” Marc called.
The goblins in the front of the charge ran into the invisible Shield Wall and reacted as though it had been a brick wall instead, many of them knocking themselves cold and collapsing. Others, dazed and disoriented, went reeling back from the wall and, when their compatriots ran into them, started swinging wildly, thinking they'd made it to their opponents.
“More in the hallway,” Jeff yelled from the rear, “Closing the door. Don't open it for at least ten minutes, preferably fifteen.”
The muffled sound of an explosion followed the sound of the door slamming, each of them barely heard over the combat and cries of the spawns.
The fight quickly devolved. The group's front line tightened up, but there were just too many of the spawns so Felicia fell back to the center to heal. Derrick and Felicia were kept as safe as possible in the center, healing constantly, even if some of the heals were on themselves.
When the oversized hobgoblin showed up, it showed the same overconfidence that Marc remembered from back when they were taking the High School and one of the hobgoblin warriors felt the need to challenge Rob.
The hobgoblin had actually done them a favor, kicking goblins clear from a section around it as it approached. With the lightened load, Marc was happy enough to keep fighting with his gladius until Rob had engaged the Warrior, then hit it with a Water Jet from the side. He took a couple of hits from the smaller goblins in exchange for getting his spell off, but they were more of a nuisance than an actual danger, except in the numbers they were facing. It didn't matter though, as soon as he returned to gladius work, his body flashed with a golden glow and the health taken by the goblins was restored, along with some he'd lost earlier in the fight.
Rob took the hobgoblin out quickly after that, his ax smashing through the hobgoblin warrior's defenses and armor, leaving the Warrior with a shocked look on his face, briefly, before he was cut down with another strike of Rob's ax.
With their leader taken out, what little organization the goblins had been following fell to pieces. Marc took advantage of that when the goblins followed their natural instinct to cluster together for protection. When he saw them doing that, he took another couple of hits in order to cast a Flamethrower spell, panning it back and forth across the group before turning it on the spawns that had just attacked him.
He actually burned himself a little with the last part, some of the flames somehow splashing back into him from the goblins that had been in close attacking him. Even with the mild fire resistance from his spider silk tabard, it still hurt. That was washed away a moment later when, this time, he glowed purple and a cold chill invaded the wounds he'd collected, seeming to freeze them shut before fading away after restoring his health.
Wow, Derrick's heals feel a lot different than Felicia's, he thought for a moment before focusing back in on the fight.
In the end, they cleared the room and the worst result was that they had to spend a while regenerating their mana and doing some minor equipment repairs before moving on. They did clear the remains of the spawns out from the hallways first. Jeff's poison bomb had done most of the work for them, but some of the hobgoblins were still up when they stepped into the hallway to check. They didn't stay up for long though.
Jeff spiked the door shut while they rested and despite the occasional noises from out in the hallway, they were mostly undisturbed as they rested and regenerated.
They repeated the whole thing for the next room. Knowing what the first room had looked like, they planned for something similar. This time, there was no oversized hobgoblin warrior and the goblins and hobgoblins were lazing around on their bunks or crouching on the floor keeping themselves entertained with things like dice.
This time Jeff was waiting for the ones across the corridor to show up. If Marc wasn't mistaken, the Thief had even stepped out of the room with the combat just starting up to knock on the door across the hallway before stepping back in with the rest of the party. Once the door across the hall opened, Jeff had tossed another bomb into the hallway and slammed the door, spiking it shut like the last time.
More of the room across the hallway survived Jeff's bomb this time, but the numbers were only half that in a fully populated room and the party had no problems eliminating them once they'd regenned again.
The last two doors were similar and the only major difference was that even with Jeff knocking on the door again, the second room did not venture out to try to take the party from behind, meaning that they had go through the whole mess one more time. The only room that had had an oversized hobgoblin training the others had been the first and Marc had a sneaking suspicion that the oversized hobgoblin spawn had been responsible for training all of the rooms and not just the one they'd found him in.
At the end of the hallway, the door Marc had barely been able to see led to a very short set of stairs leading down and ended at yet another door.
Jeff took the lead again and this time he did find a trap on the door. When he tried to disarm it, it triggered, striking his finger with a small needle. He turned to say something, then froze, the only movement the slow rise and fall of his chest. At the same time, the door swung slowly open.
* * *
Felicia darted forward and grabbed Jeff, dragging him back up the stairs. Rob stepped forward and blocked the door.
“Tell me when, Marc.”
“What are you seeing?” Marc asked.
“Seven hobgoblins. Two look like that big buy, two more are wearing feathers, two have staffs, and the last one is standing at what looks kinda like a build pedestal. They're about to—”
Rob jumped back, cursing.
“Oh shit, two are casting.”
Rob slammed his shield down to block the doorway and hunkered down behind it. Marc used the near instantaneous casting time of his Anti-Magic Shield to get a shield up, then get right behind Rob and move the shield in front of both of them.
He felt the impact of the spells on his shield and it dissipated immediately. It did block most of the spells though and while Rob lurched back at the impact of something on his shield, nothing got through it and he stayed on his feet.
“In, fast, they're attacking already,” Marc said.
Rob rose and went to step into the room, only to find the two hefty hobgoblin warriors blocking the doorway.
“Rob, can you get your shield through the door sideways?” Marc muttered, just loud enough for the tank to hear.
“Yeah, why?”
“Go through together, you take left, I take right. Ready, set, go!”
They both had to turn sideways to get through the door together, but they each turned so that their shields came out first and were in place to block the initial attacks of the hobgoblin warriors.
“Shield Bash, then we get everyone else in here,” Marc yelled.
He matched his action to his words and his shield went flying out to strike the Warrior he was fighting. He barely staggered it with the first one, so before it could recover, he hit it with another Shield Bash, eating up a lot of his stamina to do the two maneuvers back to back.
The second Shield Bash took the warrior off its feet and Marc stalked forward towards where it lay sprawled on the floor.
Rob had taken his off its feet and sent it flying with his initial Shield Bash and now had room to unlimber his ax and get to the serious work of fighting. He grunted in pain as a series of glowing darts struck him in the side as the casters let out another round of spells. Marc nearly had his own problems with that.
System Message:
You have resisted the spell: Paralyze.
You are slowed by 25% for 30 seconds.
The brief reprieve given to the hobgoblin warrior by the slowing effect of Marc's successful resistance allowed the warrior to get back to its feet before Marc could attack again.
As Marc was moving forward he was pushed to one side, Chris passing him and taking the hobgoblin Warrior's next strike on his shield.
“I can handle this one,” Chris said. “You take care of their casters. Those would give me a problem.”
Marc placed himself between Chris and the nearest of the casters, the one he thought had probably paralyzed him, or tried to. His first act was to put up another Anti-Magic Shield, regardless of its mana cost. Now he could protect both himself and Chris, if Marc kept himself positioned correctly, from direct damage attacks.
Marc caught the hint of a golden glow washing over him and he returned to his normal speed. After a second flash of gold, he felt his blood speed up in his veins. He was pretty sure he'd just gotten the minor speed buff that the party had relied on more at lower levels.
Which is good, we might need the edge here, he thought.
He started casting and heard Felicia yell out.
“Derrick will have Jeff on his feet again soon.”
Marc saw more spells racing out here and there in the room. It looked like Ella and Todd were ganging up on the other caster, keeping it from interfering in Rob's fight. Felicia was keeping an eye on them, trying to dispel any debuffs the other caster put on either of the group's Mages.
So, I've got to take care of this one, Marc thought, releasing the Mana Darts he'd just cast.
He'd chosen the flaming version since they just seemed more intimidating than the normal ones, and they raced across the room only to dissipate on some sort of shield in front of the other caster that was his target.
He's shielded like I am, I could bust through it with my Lightning Bolt, but this room is small enough that it would bounce all over the place and I don't want to kill off my own party. So, let's try this.
Marc, keeping himself between his target and Chris, who was having a hard enough time with the hobgoblin Warrior, advanced on the caster. His shield absorbed another spell as he advanced, it looked like the hobgoblin caster had returned fire with his own volley of Mana Darts.
Once he was close enough he let loose with a Flamethrower spell, focusing it on the caster. The flames splayed out in front of the hobgoblin, intercepted by the shield due to their magical nature. Marc was hoping that its shield had the same limitations as his own, which was close to dropping as it was struck by another grouping of Mana Darts.
Before the hobgoblin caster could get off a third batch of Mana Darts, its shield failed. The Flamethrower bathed it in shower of magical napalm and the hobgoblin's screams filled the room.
Marc's ears rang as the roar of a shotgun echoed off the stone walls. He looked up to see that the hobgoblin that had been at the build pedestal had staggered back from it. The pattern the shotgun pellets had left on his chest told Marc why. He also noticed that the two with staffs were using them, bolts of light racing out of them to strike the hobgoblin Warriors, whose wounds kept healing.
Marc had his gladius in his shield hand so he could cast, but now, with his target on the ground and mostly helpless, he dropped the Flamethrower spell, took his gladius in hand, and struck for the caster's neck, nearly severing its head.
Good, even if those other two are healing with the staffs, I'm pretty sure this guy is beyond healing now. I need to help Chris though, now I understand why he's having trouble if they keep healing his opponent, Marc thought.
Marc tried to identify which of the hobgoblins was healing Chris' opponent. When he thought he knew which one it was, he took off at a sprint, shield in hand. He hit the caster with a Shield Bash while still accelerating. While the Warrior had stood up to the first Shield Bash, this Shaman or whatever it was went flying.
Marc realized that he was breathing a little heavy and checked his stamina.
Stamina: 572/1188 (+12)
Aha, the heavy breathing must be a warning that you've used half your stamina, or maybe that you've used too much in too short a time? I don't know, but I'm good for the moment.
Marc started spamming Mana Darts at the hobgoblin he'd just sent flying. The shotgun roared again, and this time the hobgoblin from the build pedestal roared in frustration. He was obviously trying to do something at the pedestal and Felicia was preventing him from doing so.
The hobgoblin with the staff was trying to get back to its feet, even with Marc hammering it with Mana Darts, so Marc took a few more steps forward and Shield Bashed it one more time. This time he stepped forward farther, brought his boot down on the spawn's arm, reached down, and removed the staff from its hand, dropping it straight into his inventory so the hobgoblin couldn't get it back.
