Chapter 15 - 14 — Sixty Seconds [II]
The green crystals were where they had been, and so were the rails, and so was the rotten timber platform up in the dark above the tunnel mouth.
I did not activate Androphagos.
I knew where all three of them were, and burning a minute of a five-minute cycle on monsters I had already killed once would have been the single stupidest thing I could do inside this mine.
I raised a gauntlet before we reached the platform.
"One above. Spear from the left. Third one behind the cart."
Bria’s head came around. "What?"
The Goblin dropped off the platform before she finished the word.
It came down where I was standing rather than beside Nia, because I had already moved into that space, and I put a gauntlet into its stomach before its feet had settled and folded it around my arm.
The spear came out of the left tunnel into a shield that was already braced, with Bria’s back foot spread, and it went nowhere.
Tomas had turned toward the overturned cart four seconds before the third one crawled out from under it, so he had his feet set and his draw complete and he did not miss.
It was not an ambush any more. It was three Goblins walking into four people who were looking directly at them.
[Three Level 2 Goblins defeated.]
[Experience acquired: 30.]
[EXP: 70/200 → 100/200.]
"How," Idris said, "did you hear all three of those?"
"I was listening."
He knew that was not an answer. I knew he knew, and we were standing in a mine with more of them further in, so he let it sit and picked his sword back up.
At the collapsed junction I stopped everyone short of the firing lane.
"Two crossbows on the ledge, up on the right. Two more coming along the rails once they shoot."
Bria’s shield was already angled up when the first bolt came off the ledge, and it went into the metal instead of into Idris’s arm.
Shooting told everyone exactly where they were, and Tomas answered from behind the stone support while Idris and I stayed out of the lane entirely.
The two on the rails came in fast, and they did not get to split around Bria and reach Nia from both sides, because I had already pushed us into the narrow part of the junction where there was only one way through.
[Ability Activated: Aten.]
[Mana: 160/160→ 148/160.]
I burned through the haft of a hooked blade, put the cold gauntlet across the Goblin’s throat while it was still holding two pieces of wood, and shut the Ability down before the fight was even finished.
[Ability Deactivated: Aten.]
Four dead, and this time Nia never had to spend anything putting anybody back together.
[Four Level 2 Goblins defeated.]
[Experience acquired: 40.]
[EXP: 100/200 → 140/200.]
Bria’s shield had one bolt hole in it and no crack underneath. Tomas had most of his arrows. Nia had all of her Mana, and I had almost all of mine.
That was what the warnings had bought, and none of it was going to be enough on its own.
The rails ran out at the platform, and the Hobgoblin stood up off it exactly on cue.
[Androphagos available.]
I dismissed the prompt without looking at it twice.
The thing in front of me had 260 Health and one blind eye and a bad leg waiting to happen, and I already knew all of it.
The thing behind the wall had 3,600, and I would need every second of that minute when it arrived.
"Blind on its left," I said. "Idris, rear leg, not the chest. Tomas, wait for the axe to come up. Bria, don’t take it flat."
It went for Bria first, the way it had before.
She angled the shield instead of standing under the axe, and the blade slid off the face of it and into the stone, and her shield stayed in one piece.
Idris was already at the back leg while it recovered.
Tomas held his shot until the axe came up over its shoulder and put an arrow into the gap underneath the arm.
I worked the blind side and used the gauntlets on the axe handle every time it tried to swing toward somebody else, jamming the shaft rather than trying to out-muscle it.
Then I got half a step too close and its elbow came back into my shoulder and put me on the floor.
[Health: 210/210 → 172/210.]
Knowing what a thing is going to do does not make it weaker. It was still a Level 5 boss and I was still Level 2, and the ground came up and reminded me about it.
[Ability Activated: Aten.]
[Mana: 148/160 → 146/160.]
It broke off and went for Nia, because it worked out who the Healer was in this timeline just as fast as it had in the last one.
I stepped inside the axe rather than trying to catch it, trapped the handle between both gauntlets, and put everything I had opened into its chest at contact.
[Additional Mana consumed: 16.]
[Mana: 146/160 → 130/160.]
[Hobgoblin — Level 5.]
[HP: 84/260 → 0/260.]
[Green Gate Boss defeated.]
[Boss experience multiplier applied.]
[Experience acquired: 100.]
[EXP: 140/200 → 240/200.]
[Level increased: 2 → 3.]
[Excess EXP carried forward.]
[All attributes increased by 1.]
[Strength: 19 → 20.] [Endurance: 21 → 22.] [Agility: 21 → 22.] [Perception: 17 → 18.] [Willpower: 33 → 34.]
[Maximum Health: 210 → 220.]
[Health: 172/210 → 182/220.]
[Mana: 146/170.]
[Unassigned Attribute Points: 0 → 3.]
[EXP: 40/300.]
The dungeon had been rolled back to the start, so the System counted every one of them as alive again and paid me for all of them a second time.
And my old EXP had stayed on the board while it did.
That was worth more than the Ability card.
Ouroboros was not simply handing me another attempt at the same afternoon, it was letting the work survive the erasing, so the same seven Goblins and the same Hobgoblin could go on making me stronger every time I came back through this mine.
I did not stop to enjoy it, because the wall behind the platform was still standing.
The level had raised my ceiling by ten and handed me the ten points it added, and that was the entire extent of its generosity.
My shoulder still hurt exactly as much as it had before the notification, and my Mana sat where I had left it, because a level increases what a body can hold rather than refilling what it has already spent.
Nia came over and put her hand on the shoulder without being asked.
"Hold still."
The light gathered under her palm, and the ache went out of the joint, and she was breathing harder when she took her hand back.
[Health: 182/220 → 220/220.]
"How much did that cost you?"
"Enough that I’d rather you didn’t do it again."
[Three Attribute Points allocated.]
[Agility: 22 → 25.]
My footing changed again, a little more this time, and shifting my weight from one side to the other cost less than it had an hour ago.
Twenty-five Agility gives a Level 3 Player a chance to answer something. It does not put him anywhere near a Level 24 boss, and I was not going to let a number talk me into forgetting that.
[Health: 220/220.]
[Mana: 130/170.]
[Androphagos available.]
Full Health because Nia had paid for it, most of my Mana, an intact shield, and one unused minute.
I did not wait for the notification that was never coming.
"Everyone in, behind Bria. Tight."
"What are you—"
"Stay behind the shield. Watch the tail. When I say down, hit the floor."
Nia looked at me. "Watch the what?"
The crystals in the walls went from green to yellow.
The floor started shaking, and the dust came down off the ceiling, and the rails began knocking in their beds.
[Gate Failure confirmed.]
[Previous Threat Classification: Green.]
[Current Threat Classification: Orange.]
[Emergency exit unavailable.]
The wall behind the dead Hobgoblin cracked from the floor to the ceiling.
The four of them went backward, all together, the way anybody would.
I went forward, and then I made myself stop and come back.
Standing out on my own in the open was how the last version of this had ended, and there was a second reason that mattered more.
Six metres is not a large circle. If I opened it out there with the others behind me, it would cover the Manticore and nothing else, and a warning that only reaches one person is not a warning.
I backed up until my shoulder was level with the edge of Bria’s shield and all four of them were inside arm’s reach of me.
The wall came in, and it walked through the hole, lion-bodied and red-furred with that human face sitting wrong beneath the mane, and the segmented tail already up over its back.
[Manticore — Level 24.]
[Orange Gate Boss.]
[HP: 3,600/3,600.]
Its eyes went across the five of us and settled.
The tail began to coil.
I let it come, one stride and then another, and I did not open the minute until it was close enough for the minute to be worth anything.
[Ability Activated: Androphagos.]
[Duration: 01:00.]
The chamber did not change at all.
The Manticore simply arrived inside me, an enormous living weight filling most of the field, and I could feel the shift running down through its front paws and the muscle drawing tight along its back.
And the tail. Above it and behind it, moving, while my eyes stayed on its face and never went near it.
Then the whole length of it snapped forward.
Androphagos loses the spines the instant they leave the body, because a thrown spine is not alive any more, and that did not matter, because the tail that threw them was.
"DOWN!"
I dropped, and they went down half a beat behind me, and the volley crossed the space where all five of our heads had been and buried itself in the wall.
Nothing hit anybody.
The Manticore stopped.
Its head came lower, and that human face pulled tight around the eyes, and it stopped looking at the group entirely and looked at me.
[Androphagos Duration: 00:58.]
I came up behind my gauntlets while it gathered itself for the next one.
I had fifty-eight seconds to kill the thing that had already killed me once.