The damp, stone floors and walls of this hallway could possibly be a trap and I almost just activated one.
"Joffrey, this hallway is trapped, one wrong step means death, follow me and step exactly where I step and how I step, and we might just get through his alive", I say.
A grunt comes from Joffrey as I begin moving down the hallway.
I get an idea, and I use inspect on the walls, under this vision certain stones in the ground are colored a bright orange where everything else is black and white.
Not knowing if this means to step there or not I grab a torch off the wall and and throw it toward one of the orange stones.
A ginormous blade flies out of the walls and goes into the wall across the way, slicing the torch clear in half.
"Well shit, good to know that's what that means", I say, definitely do not step on the orange shit.
"Follow me, and do exactly as I do", I say with a wave of my hand.
The walls and floors are pockmarked with orange pressure plate stones and orange trip wires etc.
Slowly moving through the traps I admire the construction of these traps, they are built right after the other, meaning if you get caught in the path of the traps it doesn't matter how fast you are, you're getting cut up.
On the other side we let out a long exhale of relief. There we enter into a pitch black room except a singular torch at the end of the room's immense length.
Suddenly a short and lanky, pale figure with pimply, spindly limbs crawls out of the darkness, blinking it's disproportionately large black eyes at us. The creature's in a loincloth, with no hair on its body, just pimples dotting it's disgusting length.
The creature locks eyes with me and the things thin, gray lips rise into a ginormous smile accentuated by a mouthful of crooked and decayed teeth.
The creature then grabs the torch at the opposite side of the room and cackling as it extinguishes it by twisting it into the ground, casting the room into a pitch black darkness.
Slapping of feet on the stone starts as one pair but eventually it turns into a cacophony of sound as many of those things skitter around in the darkness.
Getting out my weapon, I turn all of my senses to the max as I listen for the little bastards.
"Be on guard, Joffrey those fuckers could jump out from anywhere, and one inattentive moment and you could lose your head."
"Of course" Joffrey says putting his body in a tensed position, ready to use that his agility to his advantage.
Slowly walking forward, I activate inspect and to my surprise there are no traps. Just the feeling one of those fuckers is gonna jump out and rip out your throat.
In our movement forward, I hear slight slapping of feet, along with scraping across the ground.
My footsteps are silent as I don't know if they can see in the dark or they simply just have good senses.
A blade flies over my right shoulder, cutting the cloth of my shirt. Dodging out of the way I jump forward, right into the arms of one of those ugly fuckers.
With a screech and the feeling of ten tiny knives digging into my back, I take the thing's arms and hold them in one hand due to how skinny these things are.
Grabbing both arms with one hand, I grab one of the legs with the other. I then throw my foot into the thing's stomach, launching it across the room.
With that exchange, I find that these things are incredibly light for a humanoid, maybe 50lbs (23kg) soaking wet. Ragdoll time.
Feeling around in the room due to the darkness, I get an idea.
Holding my mace in hand, I stand up fully and drag the metal of the mace across a wall. Sparks fly as the room lights up temporarily.
It lights up five of the things, minus one laying on the ground while clutching it's stomach.
Suprisingly, with a crazed look, Joffrey flies forward plunging his knife and sword through the flimsy ribcage of the creature closest to him.
[ Emaciated Cave Goblin +5 exp +5gold]
Wait, we share experience? I wonder if it's because we're fighting together and the dungeon qualifies us as a party. Anyway.
Not one to be left out of the fun, I drag the mace across the ground providing some light. I bring it down on a goblin's head, squashing it like an overripe watermelon.
Cleanly pulling his weapons out of his victim Joffrey jumps into a frenzy, sending a fist into the next goblin, nose breaking and blood spurting like a fountain. In it's daze he drives his knife up through the bottom of the goblin's chin, cutting the tongue and breaking into the bottom of the skull, effectively killing it.
Using the hand holding the knife currently embedded in the goblin's skull he bashes his fist into another goblin, taking the flailing corpse with him.
The goblin-punched goblin gets knocked onto the ground where Joffrey drops both of his weapons and straddles the goblin bringing fist after fist into its skull.
The last goblin that I kicked in the stomach sees the scene in front of it and limps toward the exit, wimpering into the next room. Picking up Joffrey's sword, I hurl it into the back of the fleeing goblin, killing it.
[Emaciated Cave Goblin ×4 +20exp +20gold]
Meanwhile, as I look back at Joffrey, I still hear fists slamming into a fleshy surface. With a mad look on his face he is smashing hand over hand into this goblin's caved in face.
"Joffrey, I think it's dead bud", I say putting a hand on his shoulder. As I do that he smacks it away and shoots a stare my way that could take paint off a wall.
I do the first thing that comes to me naturally and stare him down harder. A pressure starts to visibly build in the air, as Joffrey's face starts to go pale.
He falls to the side, off of the goblin, and christ, did he do a number on it, a decent portion of the head was a pasty bone soup.
Joffrey falls out of that anger, but instead cradles his shaking head in his battered hands, laughing a deep, sorrowful, lament.
"Well, you've seen this side of me now", he says looking at me with a deep sadness.
"I'm ashamed of my anger, I can't control it at times. I just always hurt people that I don't mean to. This anger, it's a bane on my existence", he says, sorrow dripping off his words like drops of pure shadow.
"Well just know, that you're not alone, if people hadn't been there for me, I would have killed people. I see that you have", I say, sitting down beside him and leaning on the wall.
Looking up at the ceiling, I just sit with him as he buries his head into his knees, broken sobs shaking his frame.
I sit because I understand. I say nothing because emotions are difficult, always will be always have been. I sit in silence because sometimes, the best thing for someone is to do nothing, being there for them is all they need. Understanding, sometimes that's all we need.
We sat for a while before I say,"You know, I've got anger issues out the ass, always have. The first time someone picked a fight with me I left them a broken mess, and someone had to stop me, I'm sure I would have killed him if I wasn't stopped. Good thing for us is that there's a way to fix this."
He looks at me with a look of utter disbelief as he says,chuckling," That's got to be the worst bullshit I've heard all year."
"Well fortunately, it's not, as we get stronger you will get a greater control of your emotions, and that's a promise", I say.
I stand up and say, looking at him," Joff, I know how hard this can be, believe me, but we need to move on. Sitting here isn't going to get us out of here."
Reluctantly he stands, sending me a sorrowful look as he picks up his weapons and we move onto the next floor.
Going down a flight of stairs, we come into a large room lit by torches about that is about 30x30ft(9x9m).
The visibility of this room was decent.
A ginormous sac made of a dark green leather and imbibed with boils the size of my hand, is pulsating in the center of the room.
[Dungeon Challenge Issued ]
[Objective: Both you and Joffrey have to survive and get to the other side of the room. This is the only way forward and if both of you don't do it, you will have to start over. I doubt it would be any other way. Get through this, I know you two can, I believe in you both. ]
[Reward: ******* Resistance, +3 strength, +5 vitality, +3 agility +3 reflexes for you and your party ]
[Christian, just know I did not choose to send you against this particular enemy, please forgive me for the pain it will inevitably cause. Now take confidence in each other and go touch the cacoon, that is the only way to move forward. P.S. for the love of all that is right, don't get hit. ]
"Joffrey, I just got a quest from my system, when we complete this we will gain power, we just need to fight whatever is in 'that'. We have to touch it and fight whatever's in there to move on", I say anxiety evident in my tone.
"Anything special your system told you about this enemy?", questions Joffrey.
"Oh, yeah... Um, don't get hit you'll probably die", I say with unease.
I steel myself and with a nod from Joffrey we step forward.
Standing in front of it with weapons drawn I touch the filthy cacoon with my outstretched arm headed by a mace.
Suddenly a sword cuts through the leathery exterior of the cacoon and smacks mace across the room.
Stepping back a few feet, I see the sword cut down and through the cacoon, that slowly loses form and out steps a disgusting visage.
A singular horn sticks out of this thing's head, caked in blood, pus and dirt. Down on the face the thing has one eye, bloodshot and threatening to pop out of its skull. It has the general shape of a human, but it is much different. Going down further, a gaping smile riddled with decaying and yellowing teeth that drip with saliva that pools in yellow puddles on the floor. Occasional snickers and chuckles are heard from this horrid being as insanity is prominent on its features. It's bloated stomach is cut open, it's organs spilling out into the floor and dragging behind it as a stench worse than anything I've smelt and a gas billows out in a green smog through cuts in the aforementioned organs. It's gray skin supplies it's bloated and pus marred body with a terrifying visage.
Throwing the skin of the cacoon away it sits there a moment before locking eyes with me. It's wide spread smile only seems to grow larger as it's cracked and crazed voice croaks out ," One.... Two... Three.. Four.. FIIIVE!!".
As it went through the numbers it slowly got louder and louder and rushes toward me as it turns it's head and slowly starts crawling towards me. As it gets to five it screams the word and it lunges at me.
It's disgusting sword slices toward me as I dodge out of its path. I send a kick into the head of beast, and to my surprise it doesn't even look like it felt it, even trying to take a bite out of my shoe as it's head gets thrown backwards.
Not missing the opening, Joffrey slides by me as his knife cuts into the sword wrist of the pestilant being, but getting caught half-way through the ulna( the bone in the bottom of the arm), making its sword dangle in its hand.
The being bites into Joffrey's shoulder as I whip around to the back of the creature and put my arms around its disgusting waist, thrusting my waist forward while shoving my back towards the ground, slamming it's head into the ground with a German suplex as it makes a heavy smack against the cold stone floor.
Quickly sprawling out of the way the being simply gets up as it shambles in my direction as it cackles out numbers, mumbling them under its breath.