It had taken them ten days to get through the lamia levels, of which there were only four. The next five levels would be against harpies in the mountains, from what Evren had read. Harpies were all women and were half bird, their arms being wings and lower body being that of a bird, with the head and face of a woman. The loved to eat human flesh and had a nasty habit of grabbing someone, flying high into the air and letting them fall to their death.
Evren wanted to get everyone some training on how to deal with this problem. The first was to make sure everyone could cast the spell 'shock' and to get them used to the idea of using it when they were grabbed by a harpy. The second spell was 'levitate', so if they were dropped, they could use the spell to fall slowly to the ground.
Those without the ranged attack ability would be the ones that would kill the harpies when they were knocked out of the air. From what the book from the adventurer's guild mentioned, the harpies were weak when on the ground. Their sweeping attack with their talons and their numbers were what would make them dangerous. In the wild, the harpies would leave if half or more of their numbers were depleted. In the dungeon, they will fight until the last one.
The harpy queen was the boss on the 95th floor and was the only one of the harpies that could cast spells. It could cast most spells from the wind and lightning categories. It would also have nine regular harpies with it, directing them and attacking from a distance.
However, when you actually looked at a harpy, they only vaguely resembled human women. The only thing that was distinguishable as identifying them as women were the breasts. Which were disappointing to Walter and Fletcher, and Evren was completely indifferent.
"I don't see what you're getting all worked up for, they're monsters." Evren finally said to the two of them as they were complaining to each other. "On top of that could you both shut up because you're making the girls uncomfortable."
The boys apologized completely and remained silent for the next two days as they got used to the environment. Occasionally a comment like, "The lamias were better." Would pop up but a glance from one of the girls shut them up.
Fifteen days later, they arrived at the boss room and decided to rest and discuss strategies before entering. They had spent a week and a half getting through the harpies and had gotten used to their fighting style so they could identify weaknesses and strengths in the party against the harpies. Evren would be ranged for the fight and would target the harpy queen with magic and arrows until she was defeated. Harley and fletcher would do their best to knock the harpies out of the sky for Isobel and Walter to finish off. When Evren finished with the harpy queen, he would assist where needed.
The next morning, the strategy went off without a hitch, and was actually quicker than expected as Evren was sniping harpies from the sky after the initial shot on the harpy queen killed her instantly. Fletcher tried to compete with Evren, but it was no contest with Evren's bow and arrows that could pierce much deeper than Fletchers.
"When are you going to make me some arrows?" Fletcher asked.
Evren replied, "What are you talking about? You've gotten all the manticore arrows I've made, I even upgraded them with lamia claws for arrowheads!"
Fletcher retorted with, "Yeah, but they're not adamantium arrows."
Evren only replied with, "Nope, those are mine."
"We made good time on the harpies, so we're going to visit the next floor a little bit to get everyone a first look at the next five levels. The monsters are called medusa. They have the ability to paralyze when you look them in the eyes, and their venomous bite can turn you to stone. Like the harpies, they're half woman, but the other half this time is a snake." Evren said to the others.
"It's very important that you don't look them in the eyes." He said as he looked everyone in the eyes.
"Got it!" "Ok." "No problem" "Yes Mr. Evren"
Evren led them out of the boss's chamber and headed down the passageway that looked like a valley to the next area. There was an underground entrance on the way that looked like it was leading to another dungeon. As they walked down the ramp leading to the next floor, it turned into an underground ruin. Shortly after reaching the level, Evren said, "Ok, we've got one coming."
The figure that was approaching through the shadows seemed to be gliding as it travelled over the ground. As it came into the light, you could see the lower body of a snake, still leading into the darkness and the upper body of a woman, with a head full of snakes instead of hair. Evren was staring at the ground in front of him, focusing on the medusa with his sensory field. He turned to the side to make sure nobody was looking and saw Walter staring ahead.
Evren said, "Don't look her in the eyes!"
Walter replied, "I'm not looking at her eyes."
He got slapped from behind by Isobel. Evren was staring at Walter with a look of disappointment when Walter turned to look at him. Evren heard from behind him, "If you're not looking at her eyes what a…. ooooh!"
Evren sighed and looked back towards the ground as the medusa began working its way towards them. He sighed under his breath, "Idiots."
He stepped forward and slashed the medusa in half at the waist, her lower snake half continuing the writhe about as the upper half screamed. Evren stabbed it through the heart and ended the fight. When it had dissolved away, he picked up the yellow mana gem and tossed it into his pouch. He turned around and started heading towards the ramp to the 95th level and said, "Do I have to do this level with just me and the girls?"
"I was just taken by surprise; I swear it won't happen again!" Walter said.
Fletcher said, "I didn't really look until Walter did. Even then I didn't really look. Much."
"Yeah yeah. Let's head up to Anbuton." Evren said as he went up the ramp.
They headed up to Anbuton and separated at the teleportation glyph. Evren headed back to the home he was staying at and pulled a bag of feathers out, putting them with the other bags. He looked down at all the bags of feathers and thought, "I could make a feather mattress with this amount." He began maintaining his equipment, which didn't have much damage on it. He then ate and went to sleep.
He got up early in the morning and went for a run by himself. As he ran, he was planning the next five levels. It's a ruin, so there'd be plenty of room for the monsters to hide. He still wanted Isobel to scout out for monsters, but he was concerned for her and decided while she was out scouting, he would keep watch on her. The girls shouldn't be much of a problem, Harley can keep a watch at the monster's waist from a distance, and Isobel would usually be behind the monsters anyway. Fletcher would need to see where he's aiming, but he had a trick that he wanted to do that might help the situation. Currently Fletcher focuses on the target with the arrow in his periphery, but if he can get Fletcher to get used to shooting by focusing on his arrow, with the target in periphery, then he should be ok.
With Walter, he thought it might be a good time to work on his blind fighting skills. But that would be too difficult for this late in the dungeon. He'll just have to focus more on the waistline instead of the head. This was frustrating for Evren, because not only would looking in the eyes be a problem, looking at the chest would as well. Evren decided the next few days of training would be focused on looking elsewhere during a fight.
He also learned last night the medusa have some that are archers and will fire arrows at range as a way of getting people to look at them. This was something Evren had a few ideas for, so he was planning to be support for the next few levels; shooting targets with his bow and casting magic as needed. For the arrows, he would use 'wall' as needed, but he wanted to try the wind spell 'barrier' as well to see if that would be effective against arrows.
He didn't want to be the main fighting force though. He wanted the others to get used to fighting, so he no longer had to give instructions during the fight. They've fought together for quite a while now, and his need for instructions have lessened. There's still communication between members, but it has become less of 'do this' and more of 'I'm doing this.'
When he got to the training area, everyone had already arrived and were waiting on him. He would be running again with them, this time at his training pace, which was faster than what he had just run. Upon finishing the run, he spoke with them the thoughts he had during his run and advised them of the plans going forward.
Walter said, "I want to work on blind fighting."
Evren obliged him and blindfolded him and fought him using wooden swords. Walter lost. It wasn't even like it was close. At one point Evren was behind him saying, "Turn. More. More. More. Ok, now swing." Walter complained that it was too noisy, and Evren retorted that it would be even noisier during a real fight.
He tried to work with them again to teach them telekinesis, so they could use something like his sensory field, but it was not successful. They could feel the magic, but other than through the use of spells, would not be able to directly influence it.
Fletcher had suggested someone get paralyzed by one of them to see how long it would last for, but Evren was against the idea, saying, "I'd rather us to focus on preventing it from happening rather than seeing how long it'll last if it does happen."
They did plan how to react if someone got paralyzed though, with that person being considered "out" they went over scenarios where others would protect the one down.
Evren continued this training for a few days after their initial visit to the 96th floor before he suggested they try again after the next time they went hunting in the forest for meat. Townsfolk had requested for more thunder hog to be hunted, but they hadn't run across any more of them. Their main source of meat was the deer that were in abundance in the forest. Occasionally a wild boar would come along and find its way inhibited by an arrow.
Evren packed his backpack so they could survive a month down in the lower levels and they headed to the 96th floor. The first medusa they came across was an archer, and Evren felt the arrow coming at him, so he cast 'barrier' and stepped aside. The arrow hit the wall of wind and fell to the ground, bouncing away from Evren.
Evren thought that was impressive, so he tried that in turn. When he was about to shoot an arrow at the medusa, he cast the spell 'blast' causing a burst of air to move away from him. He wasn't sure if it made the arrow faster, but it did throw off his aim a little and he decided not to do that again.
They proceeded through the level, only finding one or two medusas at a time. Isobel had no issues with scouting them out and even began pulling them back towards the end of the level, which had taken them three days to cross. Evren felt they were making good time, as that was the average for the previous levels with the lamia.