Grim was happy that his boon bow did not require physical arrows to fire. It took more than fifty arrows to finally fell the beast, and that was only counting the ones that had hit. The number of projectiles that had completely missed the monster was best forgotten. It was hard, after all, to focus on shooting accurately while a monster was breathing fire at him. But, in the end, Grim peppered the beast with enough arrows that it finally collapsed.
? “That took longer than expected,” he said, letting out a sigh and finally lowering the bow. He’d felt the rush of essence that indicated both the monster’s death and the quest’s completion. “You can go back to your troupe now.”
? “Thank you for your help, Delver,” the elder goblin said, stepping forward to take Grim’s free hand in both of its own. “You have saved our lives this day. This token may be small, but it is of great value to me. Please accept it as an insufficient but deserved reward.”
? Grim pulled his hand away and glanced down, seeing a small scroll of parchment clenched in his fist. His heart spiked in excitement as he recognized it. A skill scroll. It was more valuable than anything else he could have plundered from this dungeon. Depending on which skill it gave, it could even be equal to all the loot he’d acquired since awakening.
? Around him, the two healthy goblins were still tending to the injured ones. The elder watched him quietly for a few minutes before craning its neck to look past him, to where the dragon lay. “Delver, do you not intend to claim your prize?”
? “Huh? Oh, right. Yeah, I’m going to skin the dragon.” He tucked the scroll away into a pouch at his belt, glad he’d thought to bring his field kit with him. He wouldn’t be able to take all of the dragon’s useful materials with him, of course, but he could extract several vials of its blood and a good pile of scales.
? “Yes, of course,” the elder continued. “That is your right, as it was your prey. But I mean… You are finished here, sir.”
? Grim looked at the elder, frowning, then turned to follow its pointing arm. A small island had appeared in the middle of the miniature lake at the center of the cavern, upon which sat a large metal-bound chest. Was that… the end reward? He hurried forward, not even bothering to avoid the water. He splashed his way over to the chest and felt it out with his senses, checking for some kind of trap. Nothing. And it felt exactly the same as every dungeon’s full reward he’d seen.
? “But that’s impossible,” he muttered. “A dungeon with just one floor? That’s… unheard of. At least not at level two.”
? It was only when he attempted to open the chest that he realized he wasn’t finished. It was locked, and even several attempts with his picks couldn’t surpass that challenge. So that meant that, somewhere in this dungeon, there was a key he’d have to fetch. He bit his lip thoughtfully. It wasn’t unheard of for a dungeon to have its boss on the first floor, if there were more than one. That meant that the downward-sloping tunnel he’d found did in fact lead deeper into the dungeon. And it was likely that’s where he’d find the key.
? A proper search of the rest of the large cavern showed no other tunnels besides the one he’d come from. But he couldn’t just leave the chest here alone, could he? He wasn’t sure what happened if a delver or party didn’t take the final reward right away, but he was sure that other monsters could find and claim it if he left it too long.
? “Gonna have to bury it,” he decided. After a quick check to make sure the goblins weren’t looking, he used the spade in his field kit to start digging a hole. It took him a few minutes, but soon he had one large enough, and heaved the chest in. It gave a deep *thump* as it hit the bottom, making him glance around for spying eyes again. Finding none, he kicked the dirt he’d excavated over it, and did his best to smooth the disturbance. It wouldn’t fool human eyes, but monsters without sentience wouldn’t likely notice the difference.
? He knew he could afford to take his time, so he drew one of his daggers and started prying scales off the dragon. More than a few of them simply broke during his attempt to harvest them, but after an hour or two, he had several pounds of them in a pile, which he transferred to his pack. He wanted to harvest the gland that the beast used to produce fire–it was a valuable alchemical ingredient worth nearly as much as the skill scroll–but couldn’t risk it. Failure could cause the gland to combust, and that would almost certainly mortally wound him.
? “Best I can manage,” he grunted, getting back to his feet and looking at the dragon’s corpse. He’d barely taken a quarter of its scales off. No usable horns to harvest either, he thought, frowning. If it weren’t for the scroll, that fight might not have been worth it. He snorted at his own greed and complaints. He’d survived a dragon fight and had a hefty reward waiting for him. Who was he to complain about such a gift?
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? After washing his hands and knife off in the pool, he doubled back to the previous chamber where the three paths stood. No sign of a roaming monster, which meant that he’d likely cleared the floor, save for those worker goblins at the entrance. He took the first path again, and when it started to slope steeply, he knew for sure that it was the end of the first floor. Then the floor became steeper, and he frowned. How low would it make him go before it leveled out?
? The answer was given to him along with a rather nasty shock. A small stream of water poured out of a fissure in the wall partway along the tunnel, and the incline steepened again. He had half a mind to pull the pick out of his field pack to make his descent smoother when, without warning, his foot slipped on the slick stone under him, and he began a dangerous, uncontrolled slide. He slid slowly at first, but began to pick up speed as the path went deeper yet again. Now falling at an almost forty-five-degree angle, he tried frantically to hit a side wall to slow his descent. But he was almost perfectly in the center and couldn’t achieve any friction to change his trajectory.
? The slide ended abruptly, and he shot out of the tunnel with a great splash of water, his momentum skipping him across the small pool of water that waited at the entrance to a large cavern. Then his shoulder hit hard stone again, and he rolled a few feet further, grunting in pain until he finally stopped. He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could and looked around. At once, it became clear that the slope was a trap designed to catch unwary delvers off guard.
? Six goblins sat along one side of the cavern, looking at him in some shock, equally caught off guard by his surprising appearance. Their surprise lasted only a moment, however, before the largest of them let out a snarl and scrambled forward, a chipped short sword in its hand.
?? Grim cursed the dungeon as he drew his daggers, then used Shadow Dash to get behind the pack. He caught the farthest one in the back, a goblin holding some kind of dirty gem that glowed with a red light. He wasn’t letting him cast a single spell. His dagger raked across the goblin mage’s throat, then he released the monster, letting it fall to the ground, gargling and clutching its throat.
? An arrow flashed past Grim’s ear, and he ducked, then looked for the source. Two more goblins sat at a tunnel leading out of the cave, their fangs bared and their weapons trained on him. Cursing again, he picked up the body of the mage and held it over his torso and head. An instant later, two arrows slammed into the goblin’s limp body, and he threw it aside before using Shadow Dash to close the distance.
? He couldn’t get all the way behind the goblins, but he did appear within ten feet. He threw himself forward before they could adjust to his sudden move, and seized the bow that one of them was holding. He pulled the smaller monster off its feet with a savage tug, then, using the bow he still held, smacked it down on the wrist of the second archer. The goblin let out a screech of pain and backed away, still holding its weapon, but its last attempted shot had been ruined.
? “Die, delver!” It screeched in Tennido, trying frantically to draw another arrow. But Grim dashed forward and to the side, stepping out of the bow’s path before slashing at the goblin’s supporting arm. Another screech, and it finally released the weapon. He couldn’t finish it off, though, as the five goblins in the cave were quickly catching up.
? The biggest weapon among them was a club nearly two feet long, and the monsters were all level two, so the danger wasn’t as high as it had been with the dragon. But if he got surrounded, he could quickly fall. Caution was a delver’s best friend, he told himself. Risk equaled reward, but greed had to be tempered. So rather than fighting back just yet, he bolted to the left, pulling the crowd of goblins away from that tunnel entrance. The cooldown of his first Shadow Dash finished, and he reappeared behind the pack yet again, taking the archer he’d previously disarmed before it could reclaim its bow. The other archer’s arm was too weak to hold his bow, so he left it for later, dancing out of reach of the pack yet again.
? He continued to kite the pack of goblins in a large circle around the cave, nimbly avoiding their lunging strikes and trying to stop them from grouping together. Each time he could use his Shadow Dash, he appeared behind one of them, delivering a quick, nasty cut that killed them instantly. Using this method, he was able to defeat the pack in about three or four minutes. Finally, it was just the last goblin, the one holding the club, and Grim kicked the weapon out of its hand before slamming it to the stone floor and jabbing his knife into its chest and wrenching.
? Safe at last, he let himself sit on the stone floor, his chest heaving, to recuperate for a few minutes. The trap had been effective, but at least he’d landed in a large enough space to let him kite the monsters. But the archers had been a close call. Grunting and aching all over from his tumble down the long tunnel, he searched through the clothing and equipment of the goblins. Apart from a handful of silver coins that he added to his strangely heavy coin pouch, he found a pleasant surprise.? One of the goblins had been wielding an enchanted dagger. He inspected the weapon and recognized a basic returning enchantment. He slid it into his belt, pleased with the overall fight.
? Down the tunnel from the cave, he found what he was looking for. Another pack of goblins waited in this final chamber, eating and drinking around a small fire. Four in total, but they also had another ally napping nearby. He struggled to pick out the silhouette of the monster at first because of the bright fire, but eventually recognized the humanoid shape and the long, crooked nose. A Greater Goblin. Peering closer, Grim could just barely make out a glint of metal hanging by a long cord around its neck. The key.
