You are Summoned

Chapter 233. Attempted Parley.

“I’ll take the melee goblins with me, as well as the goblins from my team. Hold everyone else back here in the village,” I ordered.

For my first contact with wizard, I didn’t want to show our total strength. For what I expected to face, I figured a dozen melee goblins, Blieek, and my trio of goblin minions would suffice. If needed, I had plenty of consumables to augment our forces. The best-case scenario was that we could work out some kind of compromise.

As we hustled from the goblin village toward the entrance, Capria granted me a dungeon view of what was going on. At first, I became dizzy and stumbled a bit, but soon learned to limit and focus on what I was looking at. Normally, a dungeon saw everything within it all at once. The human mind wasn’t set up to handle that kind of information overload, and once Capria blocked out the extraneous information, I was good.

None of our defenses were in view of the enemy yet, and I wanted to keep it that way, so I pushed our team to reach the intruders before they organized and moved out to attack. If the kids exploring the dungeon were anything like the group I was summoned into, they would have a wide, but random, variety of creatures and summoned beings to work with.

I caught a glimpse of them from my dungeon view. Like before, there was another orc berserker of some type, a huge green guy with no armor and a two-handed axe. There was also a gnoll in chainmail with a heavy crossbow, a halfling with daggers, an oversized wolf with spikes on its body, and rounding out the group was a human woman in plate armor holding an oversized, glowing book in her grasp.

Pulling out one of my scrolls as we ran, I cast shield. A light glow flickered around my body as the magic took hold. It would give me an extra layer of armor, and additional protection against ranged attacks, both magical and physical, until the shield had reached its limit. Even with extra protection in place, and my new armor and shield equipped, I wasn’t going to step into line of sight of the enemy just yet. Capria said she could project my voice a short distance down the passageway.

I stopped where the passageway from the starting area curved slightly, blocking my group from the intruders’ line of sight. The kids that were controlling the summoned beings, and the wizard, had just entered the dungeon, telling me that they planned to move out momentarily. Sending Capria a signal that I was ready, she prepared to amplify my voice. Having instant communication inside a dungeon was a nice little perk of working with a core and its assistant.

“Hey, you at the dungeon entrance, can we talk in peace for a moment?” I asked. I should have thought out my first contact attempt a bit better, but I was caught up in the excitement and urgency of the situation.

“Who addresses our party?” the wizard, Avius, said. I could see various protective barriers flare into existence around both him and the kids, noting that those magical protections didn’t extend to the summoned beings they were controlling. There were indeed limits to this wizard’s power.

“I’m Rico Kline, an agent hired by this dungeon core to work out some misunderstandings,” I said.

“A dungeon core hired someone? That’s doubtful. Dungeon, I gave you a command last time I was here. By this foolish display I assume that you’ve not done what I demanded you to do,” the wizard bellowed.

“Avius, I can assure you I’m real, not some dungeon construct, and I’ve brought enough with me to stop your incursions. We don’t want to fight, there is no reason we can’t work something out that benefits both parties. Surely, you don’t want to waste your resources fighting me and a dungeon at the same time, when you can continue to train and entertain your charges with just some small concessions on your part,” I offered.

“Oh, and what concessions would you expect me to offer, dungeon? Perhaps we’ll sacrifice a random first born at each new moon, or maybe you’d have me send the kingdom’s prisoners inside to be consumed by your evil,” Avius, spat back, still believing me to be just part of the dungeon.

“Once again, I’m not part of this dungeon, and I brought my own forces to help defend it if you can’t see reason. The dungeon isn’t evil, and it requires no sacrifice. All it wants is for you to follow the common courtesies that adventurers normally extend to dungeons. It wants you to stop starving it of resources,” I argued.

“Let me consider,” Avius said, making a show of stroking his long beard as he spoke. “No, I think we’ll just go ahead and harvest this dungeon’s core. There’s another dungeon that better suits our needs and is only a short teleportation away from this one. After all, I have wanted a fresh dungeon core to progress one of my experiments,” Avius said, rejecting my offer outright.

“It’s your funeral but know that we won’t target the kids you’ve brought with you if they leave now and unsummon their minions,” I told them. The kids began to look a little nervous, they had never considered that they could be hurt in this venture, and the wizard cursed under his breath.

“Send your minions forward, tear apart this dungeon,” the wizard told the kids. They sent their minions out to attack; some had the glazed-eyed look that told me the kids were taking direct control of them. Two of the kids seemed more focused on the dungeon’s exit portal, as if they expected it to close at any moment and trap them inside.

I cast Entangle on the ground in front of us and ordered my team to get ready. The dozen goblins from the dungeon took the lead. Each held crude weapons and wore no armor. I had no illusions that they would hold back the summoned beings coming toward us, but if they could delay them, my minions would get some strong hits in.

To further supplement my forces, I reached into Rodney’s Bag of Beasts to pull out another animal. The walrus had been extremely effective back in the dwarf mine, and maybe I’d get something equally effective here. Instead of a one-ton walrus, I pulled out a small, furry skunk of some kind. The system labeled it a Zorilla, whatever the heck that was. Less than two feet long, the skunk looked up at me for a command.

“Uh, just spray the enemy when they appear around that corner,” I ordered, much less impressed with the magic bag now. Well, at least it lived up to its claim, it really did supply a random animal, but not necessarily one that was useful in combat.

First around the bend was the orc, who held his axe high and roared in rage at my forces. He hit the patch of grasping limbs created by Entangle and plowed almost all the way through before slowing down. The skunk bravely charged under the feet of the goblins before raising his tail and unleashing a horrible stream of stink at the orc.

Being bathed in that horrible stench only seemed to enrage the orc further, allowing him to break free of the Entangle spell. I also unleashed the melee dungeon goblins to attack. They charged forward, shrieking their high-pitched war cries and stabbing with their crude weapons. Beside me, Glurk began to nock and fire arrow after arrow at the orc.

I also cast a Health Bloom over the goblins, but it seemed less than effective as the orc pretty much killed one with every hit. Still, the dungeon goblins were getting some hits of their own in, and the damage from the arrows was piling up. The only problem was that the other summoned beings had turned the corner and were about to join the fight.

Needing to end this quickly, I sheathed my sword and pulled my final fireball scroll from the case. Pushing mana into the scroll activated the spell, which I targeted amid the newly arriving summoned beings. A small ball of flame shot out from my hand, landing just a bit off from where I had targeted. Heat and flames erupted from the fireball, causing the summoned beings to shriek in pain as they were engulfed.

The gnoll and the halfling facing us dropped to the ground in a heap, turning almost instantly into mana vapor as the fireball hit them. Sadly, the orc was just outside the blast radius, and the human woman in armor seemed to weather the blast with only minor damage. The final member of their group, the huge wolf, looked hurt, but pushed its way into the Entangle spell, its strength tearing through the grasping roots almost as easily as the orc had.

Pulling another scroll, I cast Acid Splash. It was only a two-mana spell, which meant it was likely about as powerful as a cantrip, but I wanted to burn through the scrolls before I dug into my consumable figurines. I also wanted to save the rest of the higher-powered scrolls for the wizard when he returned with more powerful forces.

A green blob shot from my hand and landed on the nose of the wolf, sizzling as it ate into its flesh. The next moment something slammed into me, lifting me off my feet and hurling me back into the stone wall of the passageway. Mana flickered around me as the shield spell failed, and despite the spell’s protection, I could feel something in my back crack, and my knee snap as I landed.

Pain almost kept me from moving, but I managed to grab a healing potion and quaff it down. I also cast Health Bloom over me, feeling my injuries slowly heal themselves. With the healing magic working, and the regeneration from my Troll’s Belt, I would be good as new shortly. Looking over the battle, I could see that Blieek and Glem had flanked the orc and were using their spears to good effect. Glamb and the few remaining dungeon goblins kept the orc berserker’s attention.

A flash of white light hit the orc, and some of its wounds started to close. I tracked the mana from the spell back to the armored woman, who must have also been the source of the spell that had hammered into me. With renewed vigor, the orc cut through another dungeon minion as a red glow appeared around him.

“Get back from the orc!” I shouted. My minions reacted quickly, backing away as the orc activated an ability and whirled his axe around in a deadly arc, cutting down the last of the dungeon minions. My goblins continued their assault, but I sent a command to Blieek to charge the armored woman. As he ran toward her, I hit him with the Ring of Final Sacrifice and then with Duplicate.

Just like before, the spell from the ring was duplicated along with Blieek. The two Blieeks didn’t quite make it to the armored woman, though, and the wolf snatched one of the Blieek’s up in its deadly maw as they passed by it. Crunching down, the wolf caused Blieek to disappear in a puff of mana vapor. The ring’s spell activated at that moment, and the concussive blast was amplified once again by the confines of the passageway.

Blasted apart, the wolf was destroyed, and the blast also took out the duplicate Blieek, causing a second explosion to erupt. Without the wolf to shield her, the armored woman took the full brunt of the second blast, hurling her into the side of the stone passageway, just as she had done to me. She was still alive but appeared to have been knocked unconscious by the blast.

The orc had been a bit further away, and he was only stumbled by the blast, but the explosion also knocked Glamb over. Glem somehow retained his footing, and I ordered him to charge back to the woman and finish her off. I wasn’t going to make the rookie mistake of not taking out the healer. Glurk fired off another arrow, which lodged deep into the orc’s shoulder.

Reaching out for Glamb, the orc squeezed, turning my minion into mana vapor. The only thing between me and the orc was Glurk who was already firing another arrow. From my pack, I pulled the Commander’s Pilum, watching the electricity flow along the weapon’s length as I stood and prepared to throw.

The orc was easily in range of the weapon, and the enchantments on it would make sure my normally horrible aim at throwing things was not an issue. It sailed unerringly into the orc’s chest, unleashing the power of a lightning bolt as it pierced the orc through. With a final roar of defiance, the orc glowed red all over, activating some ability that would keep him in the fight for a bit longer.

Nope, I wasn’t going to go toe to toe with the orc, so I bravely ran down the passageway toward the goblin village, leaving Glurk to slow down the orc. He hit it with another arrow, but the orc ignored the latest wound and hacked Glurk into a puff of mana vapor. As I ran, I used the dungeon vision to check on Glem, who was busy stabbing the woman through any weak points that he could find in her armor. She too disappeared into mana vapor and Glem turned to chase down the orc.

With my elevated stats, I was running as fast as any normal human could hope to accomplish, but the juiced-up orc was still gaining on me. Glem was hopelessly falling behind us, and I pulled a figurine from my belt to summon another minion. Before I could push mana into the figurine, the orc stumbled and fell, turning instantly into red-tinged mana vapor.

I was no expert on berserker classes, but I knew enough that I recognized the orc’s class ability allowed him to stay in the fight for a few more seconds after death. There had been no way I could have outrun it for much longer, but I had done enough to buy time for his ability to expire and for death to claim him. Now, it was just me and Glem from the original force I’d taken to confront the intruders.

Back at the entrance, the wizard and the kids had already made their escape. I’d burned more resources than I’d wanted to, but that would hopefully fool Avius into thinking I was out of tricks. Unfortunately for him, I was just getting started.