Everyone visibly tenses up as they make their way through the hallway connecting the two rooms. They've defeated the skeletons in this room before but it's never easy. Immediately upon entering the room Chandra starts throwing knives towards the skeleton rogue. At the same time Darrel, after trying and failing to grab the enemy earth mage with a water vine, starts throwing ice spears to try and keep the mages attention. They are at a disadvantage but they're still able to keep those two occupied, even if just barely.
Meanwhile Clyde hangs back a little and lets Cole charge in by himself. Cole then uses his taunt ability which seems to be more powerful than I remember. The skeleton fighter who was originally eyeing Clyde despite him hanging back turns his attention to Cole instead. With that Cole has successfully tied up both melee units. Though that success does come at a cost with both skeletons having skills that increase striking power and striking speed respectively. Clyde for his part doesn't try to help Cole which surprises me. What he does do is turn his attention to the skeleton rogue instead while activating his own speed enhancement ability.
With Clyde's help Chandra is quickly able to get the upper hand. With the two of them working together in perfect sync They are able to easily keep the enemy off balance. As a result of their teamwork the enemy rogue is soon eliminated. They don't spare even a moment to celebrate though because there's still a lot of work to be done. Chandra turns her attention to the enemy mage while Clyde turns his attention to helping Cole. Cole for his part had switched from taunt to one of his defensive skills that somehow works by neutralizing some of the momentum of the enemies' attack. The result is the skills the two skeletons are using being effectively cancelled. Although they're still able to hit with quite a bit of force.
Instead of moving straight towards them Clyde circled around the long way to avoid being noticed. The skeleton fighter never even saw the sword that shattered his skull. The skeleton Tank did however and with a horizontal slash from his own sword was able to send Clyde stumbling backwards. Though not in time to save his ally. This was the opening Cole was waiting for though as a quick vertical slash split the skeletons skull like a coconut. Thanks to the leather chest armor Clyde received only a superficial cut on his chest. He will probably need new chest armor but that hasn't been an issue in a while.
Meanwhile the skeleton mage is surprisingly able to defend itself from both Chandra and Darrel. Unfortunately for my skeleton defend is all it can do. That seems to be enough though as they can't seem to land a solid hit on my skeleton mage. That is until Clyde and Cole join the attack. With the four of them working together the poor skeleton doesn't stand a chance and is quickly defeated. Lily quickly rushes up soon after to begin treatment. Funny enough this time it's Cole and not Darrel or Lily who is the first to reach the next level. Apparently being repeatedly left to defend against opponents that are higher level than him wasn't all bad after all. Not to be outdone Lily soon follows up with her own level up a short time later. Not surprising considering how much she does outside of combat.
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The others aren't too far away from gaining another level either. Well, except maybe Chandra who did just level up not long ago. It takes a while to treat Cole's injuries. The armor can only do so much after all. Meanwhile Clyde and Darrel are going around gathering up the loot that dropped. At the same time Chandra is collecting and examining her knives. Eventually they reach a state where they're ready to continue. Much to my disappointment they decide not to try the next room and head back the way they came. I had hoped that today would be the day somebody finally claimed one of those chests. It looks like I'll have to wait until next time though.
Once back in the last room they choose the path straight ahead from the initial entrance to the room. I would have thought they'd want to save the goblins for last. I guess they wanted to deal with the goblin's intelligence, limited though it may be, before they got too exhausted fighting the wolves. They were only slightly more intelligent than the wolves, but that was enough to make them far more dangerous.
Cole enters first trying to divert their attention away from the entrance. At first it appeared to be working. Clyde and Darrel came in a short time later followed by Lily and Chandra. Chandra already had her stealth skill active and managed to slip away moments before three of the goblins turned and suddenly pounced on Cole and Darrel. What Clyde's party always seems to forget is that the goblins can smell them. Their noses aren't as good as most animals but they're certainly far better than human noses.
Clyde blocked one while Darrel managed to get his staff up in time to block another one. Unfortunately, the third goblin made it past both of them. It was headed straight for Lily and there was nothing she could do about it. Being able to see everything meant that I was all too aware that there was no way anyone was going to be able to save her. Chandra was already tossing knives at the goblin facing off against Cole. Clyde and Darrel obviously had their own goblins to deal with. I don't normally care about such things but since they were the first to delve me this group was my favorite. Plus, the part of me that was still human didn't want to see a pregnant woman get hurt.
It felt like the world slowed down as the goblin rapidly approached stone knife in hand. Then it struck and I got to watch the knife come closer and closer and closer until finally ... nothing. It just stood there frozen in time. The knife just millimeters away from Lily's arm which she had brought up to protect her throat. What the fuck? Even I can't manipulate time, at least not yet. On top of that I know for a fact that nobody in their party did it. For one thing I can sense when a skill is used. Besides that, for such a spell to be used I'm certain I would have sensed them building up mana with my mana sense.
Don't get me wrong I'm glad Lily is still alive but now I appear to have yet another mystery on my hands. Just when I'm starting to get over the shock of what just happened, I get a notification letting me know that as compensation I will get twice the mana I would have gotten if Lily had died. As if that clears anything up.
