Chapter 45

“Sire, changes are happening in the valley, many changes.” Drullkrin, who had rushed to Michael as soon as the man had appeared in the valley, said.

“What sort of changes?”

“The scouting parties of the snow people, they stopped all of a sudden. I had thought it was a good thing, and it was only thanks to your teachings about contingencies that we avoided catastrophe.” The goblin general snickered, rubbing his hands together. “They thought they could take us by surprise while we lounged and danced and drank. It might have been the case, under the old King. But thanks to you, sire, we were ready. They came in force, people of the snow: yetis and wolves, ice trolls and snow golems. But we rebuffed them! Fought them to a standstill.”

Seeing that Drullkrin was puffing his chest in pride, Michael suppressed his natural reaction at seeing a muscular green humanoid a good foot taller than he was acting like a schoolgirl, choosing to instead smile politely. “Good job. What’s the situation now?”

“We are engaged in skirmishes, most of the army deployed. It’s a stare-off, my liege, with but the occasional fight. Ah,” he added in a hurry, “worry not, my king, I have not forgotten my lessons. Contingencies, contingencies. I have sent scouts to the other territories, and deployed many troops to hold our borders.”

“That’s actually not bad at all,” Michael said, impressed. He was relieved that there was someone who knew how to handle warfare here, because he had never even dabbled and was bound to be a lousy tactician.

“There is more, sadly. The snow forces are just the arrow fodder for the ice king, much like the swamp people are for us. The true ice creatures dwell deep inside the glacier, with but a narrow opening leading to a winding maze of ice. If we wish to take the fight to them, we will have to abandon the army and move swiftly in a small group, five of our mightiest at most.”

“What about the army?”

“They will keep the snow forces occupied while we sneak past them, my lord. It will work as a diversion, making the ice king think that we are yet to make a move.”

All of a sudden, the seriousness with which the goblin had illustrated the strategy crumbled and he started snickering and then cackling, his Fae magic flaring for a moment until he descended into a coughing fit. Michael observed the change, and his [Crude Body Enhancement] fractal lit up just a fraction more.

“That is still not all, my liege,” the goblin said after he was done gasping for air. “As I said, contingencies. The scouts revealed that the castle on the other side of the valley has opened, and many troops clad in impenetrable armor of iron have spilled out. They delivered ultimatums to the territories neighboring the castle, my lord, and are now at war.”

“Do we have to worry?”

“Not at the present moment, my king. However, it seems that my first hope has been dashed. I thought, I thought that the war would weaken whoever emerged victor, and that we may sweep in and take the spoils for ourselves all at once. Instead, what was revealed is a massacre. The castle’s army is decimating the desert and volcano people with barely any losses.”

“That’s not good.”

Drullkrin shook his head so violently that Michael thought his teeth might come out. “That it is not. But it gives us a measure of their might, at the very least, which is better than finding out ourselves. I shall come up with contingencies, my king.”

They talked some more, planning and scheming. Once their next moves were decided, they went to check on the state of the army, and indeed found the line of swamp and forest monsters in a staring contest with a line of white-furred snarling animals at the edge of the snow at the base of the mountain.

Once they made sure that the situation was stable, and that the rest of the valley was still in a state of war, they moved onto the next stage. Michael had agreed to proceed with Drullkrin’s proposed idea to create a party of five warriors to sneak past the line of snow monsters and infiltrate the glacier where the ice people and the ice king dwelled. The alternative was to bring modern weapons into the mix, but given what was happening in the rest of the valley, this was probably Michael’s last chance to challenge the dungeon without technological aid, and so he chose to do it by hand.

Apart from Drullkrin and himself, the three monsters they chose for their party were a stone golem, one of the tiny winged foxes—the very first sort of monster Michael had encountered on this floor—and a chimera.

Michael and Drullkrin were the party’s close-quarters damage dealers. The golem would be their tank. The winged fox was going to be their ranged mage, with its poisonous beams of concentrated magic, and finally there was the chimera.

With the body of a lion, the chimera had two heads: one of a lion attached to the body and another that was a snake, capable of delivering powerful bites full of venom. It had wings of a bat, which it could use for bursts of speed, and its tail was long and muscular with a bulbous tip that could shoot chitinous spikes as hard as steel.

A scary creature. I’m more and more glad I managed to kill the forest king before I had to go through all these monsters.

They set off at night, using the cover of darkness to slip past the line of defenders. In the distance, they could see the glimmer of moonlight reflected on the ice of the glacier, glittering like a million stars. A deep blue glow emanated from the ice, and the entrance to what Drullkrin’s scouts had identified as the maze leading to the king’s chambers was like an open maw in a mountain of frozen water.

A river wound its way thought the snowy landscape, escaping from the entrance of the maze and breaking the snow with its tumultuous waters. A few snow monsters were milling about by the river, gathering water to bring to the front where a sort of cold war was being fought against the forest folk. Slipping past had been easy enough at first, but the front was close enough that if Michael’s party wasn’t careful, the bulk of the forces could collapse on them in moments.

At the same time, the creatures milling around closer to the glacier were too many to slip past undetected anymore, meaning that they had to dispose of them quietly.

[Foul Water Bullet] proved to be the right skill for it, and together with [Marksman] and [Mana Manipulation] Michael was able to extend its range well beyond its normal limits, sniping the creatures one by one without being detected. He proceeded slowly and carefully, and while at the beginning he was worried that the rest of his party might grow impatient—due to the nature of the forest folk, mainly—he was soon proved wrong.

Now that he was king, his word was law. Drullkrin was there too, keeping the others in line. The golem didn’t need to be told to stay still, as it was its nature. Thus, the party waited patiently out of sight while Michael carved a path towards the entrance to the glacier.

It was interesting to see how some of his skills evolved to better work together rather than just improving on their own. With the new upgrade to the skill, he made short work of his enemies, felling most of them with a shot to the head. He always had a second shot ready, the bullet of water hovering around his head for whenever he missed his target, and in a short amount of time the party was standing at the entrance to the maze.

As soon as they were inside, surrounded by the eerie blue ice and wading through the icy water, the temperature plummeted. The Fae felt it but were largely fine, the golem did not even flinch. Michael, despite having brought a change of winter clothes, felt like he was freezing. The water had gotten into his boots, numbing his toes and making him miserable.

“Which way, my liege?”

He still had to regain his bearings when Drullkrin asked him for directions. True to its name, the maze was showing its true nature by immediately presenting three different tunnels that they could take leading deeper into the glacier.

Drying himself off on an ice outcropping with his [Candle Light] flame, Michael took a moment to examine the air. His magic sense told him that there was mana coming from the right-hand tunnel, which seemed to come from deeper underground. The light was richer, and the blue glow brighter. However, his ability to see elemental energy told him that it was the middle tunnel that was the richest, glowing with glittering shards of topaz and murky white. He was about to speak up when he noticed that the last tunnel, the one on the left and leading upwards, bore an energy signature stronger than the others: Qi.

After hearing about it, Drullkrin thought it over. The other members of the party weren’t non-verbal, they were all capable of communicating, but Drullkrin’s drills had taught all of the troops that they should only talk when they had something important to say, and waste no words. The goblin commander was no stranger to it, but he tried to speak more when in the presence of his King who, being a human, had different customs and would find the silence unnerving.

To have his subordinates able to speak when they had something important to say had been a later addition, a contingency suggested by king Michael. Drullkrin had to admit, it had been useful albeit a bit hard to implement, many creatures having a different conception of importance than he did.

“It seems like the three tunnels will pose different challenges,” the goblin chief said after a while, with all too much confidence.

It was not the first time that the goblin had acted and spoken out of character, dropping hints and pieces of information that he had no right to know. Michael had long come to the conclusion that this was the dungeon’s way of conveying important information, much like the NPC Michael met at the beginning of the floor that had never been seen again afterwards. Wary of the information given by the malignant entity—or at least sadistic, if not malignant—Michael thought it over.

“The Qi tunnel is out of the question,” he said, his commanding tone coming easy nowadays. “Qi is too powerful, and I don’t understand it well enough. We’re left to choose either the one with mana or the one with elemental energy. Are elementals a thing?”

The goblin perked up. “If you mean to ask if they exist, they do, my king. They are beings of pure element, with unpredictable spirits.”

“If the elementals correspond to the elements I can see, which are ice and water, my water bullet will probably be useless, but my flame will not.” Michael said, still thinking out loud for the benefit of his party.

“What about the tunnel filled with mana, my king?”

Michael shrugged. “More standard enemies, I guess?”

The goblin nodded frantically, eyes darting to the tunnels while gears were spinning in his head. “I say we go into the elementals’ tunnel, then. Our party is better suited to deal with them.”

Nodding, Michael led the way. A faint flame appeared above his index finger, and even though it was small and barely used any mana, the heat it produced was soothing and kept the frigid frost at bay. The cold was still savagely biting at any bit of exposed flesh, but the candle light was restorative, and the little flame element that escaped it swirled in the air, lingering before it faded.