Magic Made Simple

Chapter 10: Kobold Cave

Welcome to floor 4: Kobold Caves

Reach the bottom of the caves.

The darkness of the stairway does not give way to a new environment as it usually does upon entering a floor. Instead, I am enveloped in the pitch dark of a cave, not at all unlike that of the blind faith trial of the previous floor. Since I'd already gone through that, I knew to simply make a bead of light on the end of my wand to light the way.

All around me were stone walls with paths leading in every direction. A few seemed to branch of pretty quickly, and for a moment I was worried that I'd have to navigate it like a maze. After a few minutes of walking however, I realized that the right direction to go was towards which ever one was sloping downwards. If it really was a cave system, the exit would probably be towards the bottom accompanied by a boss fight.

After only about ten minutes of walking, I ran into my first monsters. Each one had red scales with clawed feet and hands. Their mouths were long like that of a dog, and their teeth looked pretty damn sharp. All together this probably would have been pretty menacing, if it weren't for the fact that they were only about three and a half feet tall.

The four of them simultaneously rushed at me, with all of them wielding spears. It made sense to use those as a primary weapon in the caves, as anybody using a sword or something else that you'd have to swing would be at a disadvantage with the cramped space.

I used my mana to summon a small shield with a spike on the end. I limited its size so it wouldn't be too expensive, and opted to not make a weapon as I felt mana bolt would be enough to handle these enemies.

I parried the first spear that came my way, catching the second with my hand. Another spear slid off my mana shield as I cast mana bolt in the direction of the nearest two kobolds. They both dropped dead instantly as I spun the spear around and stabbed it into the head of the third enemy.

The last creature seemed to have some sense and turned tail, running away like Satan himself was after it.

You have slain kobold (level 7) x 3

No experience awarded for defeating enemies of a lower evolution tier

With that difference in level they hadn't really stood a chance. I almost felt bad for them, but they had attacked first. I continued walking, fighting off more and more groups of monsters as I went. I kept one of their spears in one hand, with my conjured shield in the other. As long as I didn't use my mana on anything else, I was just barely able to outpace the drain of it with my mana regeneration. That allowed me to stay pretty much topped off between each fight.

The levels of the kobolds steadily rose the further I made it into the caves. At first it was just one or two of the groups that would be stronger than the rest, but soon every single enemy I faced was level nine. It had yet to throw a level ten enemy at me, but I suspected that would be happening pretty soon.

Sure enough, the caves opened up into a larger chamber after a lot of walking. In it were 6 kobolds in total. two of them were taller than the rest, being closer to 5 feet tall than the three and a half of their brethren. These were almost certainly the evolved versions of the kobolds.

I readied myself, ready to fight. The larger versions of the monsters wielded hammers now instead of spears. They weren't as restricted as they otherwise would have been thanks to the more open chamber.

The big two were the ones to reach me first. Their higher stats caused them to be quite a bit faster than the others. Instead of trying to block the hammer swings, I instead dodged around them. I had a guess that kobolds tended to have strength as their focus for their body stat, and that meant that trying to outright block an attack with a hammer would not go very well for me.