D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Gareth —

Gareth was not having a good time. Exhaustion was catching up to him, he had no idea what time it was, and the tunnels he was moving through seemed to be constantly funnelling him further down into the ground. Arguably he could just backtrack… but by the time he’d noticed every path lead further down he was hours away from where he’d started. Not to mention the large numbers of monsters he’d killed and the rewards he was getting. It was hard to justify turning around and missing out on all of that.

Of course the rewards were a bit of a mixed bag. He had THREE chests and no keys to speak of. The only reason he didn’t have more than that was because he’d decided he didn’t have enough space in his bangle and stopped doing any tasks that involved them, choosing instead to move on.

The other issue was that he’d only found a dozen or so orbs… but every one of them had been at least three hours’ worth of time. It sounded great in theory but he couldn’t store them anywhere. They were too big to carry, too big to slide into pockets and he hadn’t taken a bag or something to store them… but even if he had, they’d be constantly at risk of breaking whenever he got into fights. It just wasn’t an ideal situation all around.

Gareth glanced around at the crushed and broken corpses of monsters that had up until recently been charging at him. It’d taken most of his remaining mana to deal with them and all he was already tired. *Urgh. I need a safe place to rest but honestly I don’t even know where that would be. I could backtrack… but honestly they haven’t been all that safe. Plus there is the odd monster that can tunnel through the walls which doesn’t fill me with confidence exactly.*

Gareth sighed and kept moving, deciding it was probably best to get away from all the corpses before they attracted more monsters to his location. Gareth looked over the multiple exits that were around before shrugging and just heading down one. They looked the same anyway. For the next ten minutes that’s all there was. More tunnels that looked the same, something he was getting real sick off…

Until Gareth started to hear a rumbling. A feeling through the earth that something was on its way. Gareth readied himself and waited when the ceiling burst open and a giant mass of fluff bulldozed past. Gareth was about to swing at the monster when he paused, something about it…

Before Gareth could work out what stayed his hand Gardor slid down the gap after the fluffing thing… HIS MOLEBEAR! Gareth grinned, finally happy to have someone to talk with… only to hear something else. A chittering of wings and thousands of tiny legs coming his way. Gardor had been running. Gareth widened his eyes and jumped down the hole after the dwarf, slamming the earth behind him closed to buy him time.

Pushing his weary legs to go faster, Gareth started to slowly catch up to Gardor. Gareth seethed his sword and yelled out. “HEY! Gardor!”

The dwarf nearly fell over at the yell, but Gareth was just barely close enough to catch the dwarf. A bit of assistance and Gardor was able to stabilise. “What the bloody hell?!” hissed the dwarf. “Where did you come from?”

“I was in the tunnel you just passed and I’ve been stuck in these fucking tunnels all day! I started down here and I haven’t been able to get out!” huffed Gareth. He’d just heard something shatter behind him so that wall he’d put up hadn’t stopped whatever was coming after them. Worse, he didn’t have the mana to throw up too many more walls. Better to save it for the inevitable confrontation at this point.

“Why would you want to leave?” asked Gardor.

“Because I’m exhausted, I don’t know what time it is. The rewards seem cool but are almost useless and I can’t relax anywhere to finally get some sleep BECAUSE SHIT CAN BURST THROUGH THE WALLS.”

Gardor grimaced as he nearly tripped over the ground. “Yeah well… fair enough. See… I’m, we’re I guess, in a bit of a pickle. I wanted to explore the tunnels and see if I could find some good stuff… and I ended up in the middle of an insect hive. Well, not quite the middle, middle. Just close enough to the queen to piss her off but not close enough to kill her to stop the whole thing… and I’ve been running ever since,”

Gareth grimaced. “That’s not good. Not good at all. What’s the plan?”

“Well I’d been hoping to just keep running and eventually tire the things out or get far enough from the nest that they just give up… but that hasn’t happened yet and I’ve been running for a good thirty minutes. It’s starting to wear me down a bit. Fluffles is getting tired as well. Cutting through rock like this isn’t really what he’s good at. More of a slow and steady kind of guy,” The molebear in front of them let out a chuff as if to agree with Gardor. “Yup. So…

“We’re sort of reaching our limit,” admitted Gardor. “I might not look it but I’m not going to be in condition to fight for much longer even with the nap I had earlier,” Gareth felt his eye twitch but didn’t interrupt. “so I’d be open to any suggestions you have honestly,”

Gareth sucked in a few deep breaths as he tried to work out a plan. The bugs could obviously dig through the stone but there might be some limit to that. Of course… if he had that sort of mana then squishing dozens of bugs until they got the message would be easier. “How is your ranged capabilities?” asked Gareth.

“Not great,” admitted Gardo. “Fluffles is decent at it though. My boy put in a lot of practice!”

Gareth nodded. “Right well… I think our best chance is to dig until we find one of those wide open caverns, hopefully one without other monsters but we can work with one that’s already full. We set up at the tunnel entrance and I shrink it down using some of my limited mana. From there we fight them at the entrance.

“If they manage to break through then we back up and I’ll summon a pillar to keep us elevated. From there we essentially just ‘attack down’. All three of us will need to man a third of the square with one on a corner and the other two on the sides. I’d make it a triangle if I could but I doubt we’ll have time and my enchantments aren’t really at that level.

“From there we just do our best to wear them down. If things look to be going south then I raise the platform up to the ceiling, probably using the last of my mana, and then we keep running from there. If there are monsters in the room we jump straight to the pillar plan and hope the two groups take each other out instead of bothering us too much,”

“Right… I can see how that would work…” huffed Gardor. “How exactly do you expect us to find a place like that though?”

“Can’t Fluffles sense that sort of thing?” asked Gareth. “I thought molebears were great at navigating underground.

“Yeah when they’ve got time!” retorted Gardor. “If we had five minutes he could pinpoint every cavern within a few kilometres and then pick the one with the least monsters… but we’re moving at a breakneck pace, something Fluffles had to train to learn and his senses don’t work all that well at full speed. We’ve been working on it sure but it wasn’t a priority,”

“Feels pretty damn important now,” sighed Gareth. “Alright… so we just go randomly then? Be ready for any issues. Though… why not just head up to the surface? Would the monsters follow you up there?”

“Some of the bastards have wings,” grumbled Gardor. “If we go up to the surface not only do Fluffles and I lose the advantage of being surrounded by so much earth but they can get aerial superiority and cause us all sorts of problems.”

“What ARE we running from anyway?” asked Gareth as he glanced backwards. Fluffles had been creating a number of bends and the horde didn’t seem to be catching up so he hadn’t, and still couldn’t, see what any of the monsters actually looked like.

“Yeah… not totally sure myself,” admitted Gardor.

“What?! How? Surely you noticed when you landed in the nest?!” hissed Gareth.

“Well you’d think so wouldn’t ya?” agreed Gardor. “But the problem is, it seems to be some kind of mixed nest. There were giant ants, ladybugs, dung beetles. All sorts of insects. Honestly, I wonder if there ain’t some sort of mind control going on or something…”

Gareth sighed. This was going to be an annoying fight. Hopefully they’d start it soon and they still COULD fight.