Training Dungeon (3)

Susan was the complete opposite. She was very proficient in blocking and managed to use her shield to redirect the attacks of the rats, without directly clashing against them. This enabled her to stand her ground even though her strength was much inferior to his. This made clear the difference between him and her. She was proficient in blocking and working in a team, while he was specialized in dodging and fighting alone or with pets.

While they blocked the enemies, Tina used her bow to shoot arrows at the vital part of the rodents. Of course, it was impossible to kill them with just one arrow, even if it hit a vital part, like the eyes. For most monsters, the main weapon was their body, so they would strengthen their body as much as possible, leading to a hardened skin as well as other improvements to their defense and offense. Besides that, after reaching level 200 they would be able to form a shield around them with their stamina and because of their strengthened bodies, they would have a lot of stamina. The best way to break this shield was to attack the vital parts too, since the attacked monster would instinctively increase the stamina in the shield, resulting in higher consumption, than an attack towards a less relevant body part. Then after draining most of the targets, stamina one would be able to directly attack its body.

On the other hand, it was much harder for Lars to deal any damage to them, since he had to weave his attacks into their defense. Because Ivan was inexperienced and Susan had a hard time even holding her position, both were unable to create openings for him, making his job even harder.

But under his stabs and Tina's arrows soon the first rat fell down dead to the floor. Having gotten the hang out of it, the others were killed even faster and soon all of the rats in the group were dead. After once again collecting the loot, they then continued on.

Having fought their way through the long hallway, they reached a big hall. During the way, they had become much more proficient in fighting against these groups of rats. While at the beginning they had needed more than ten minutes to kill all of them, with Tom having to heal both of them quite often, in the end, they had taken less than nine minutes to kill them with Tom not having to do much.

Now they carefully looked into the hall, which was the first derivation to the hallway they had taken until now. In the hall, there were many groups of rats shuffling around. Groups were coming out of other entrances and then leaving through others. Some of the entrances experienced more traffic than others and one entrance was especially traveled.

"The Lord should be this way.", Susan whispered while pointing at that entrance.

"Yes, but there is no way that we can get in there without cleaning up all the rats.", Tina responded and she was right.

"Maybe we can lure these groups separately.", Lars suggested.

"It would be great if we could, but I don't think it will be that easy. If we had something to barricade a part of the hallway it would be much easier to fight a sustained battle."

There had been nothing in the hallway, that could be used as a barricade, so they couldn't reduce the size of the entrance, in order to reduce the stress on the tanks. And nobody would have something so large in one's inventory, as space was severely restricted. But when Tina mentioned barricading the hallway, Ivan remembered, that he still had some crates filled with herbs in his inventory. Unlike others his inventory was sizable, so he had kept the herbs in their crates, to make it easier to find something. If he removed the herbs, maybe they could use these crates as a blockade.

"I have some crates, but they are only the type to store some herbs, so they aren't that sturdy."

"Really? Why the hell are you wasting your inventory space for these?", Tina asked in a questioning tone. Or to be correct it was more like the tone one would use to talk to a crazy person.

"Well, to be honest, my inventory is kinda big and I don't have that many things to store in it, so there was no need to unpack these herbs, just to save some space.", Ivan embarrassedly admitted.

The other looked at him in a weird way, before shaking their head at the same time. Slowly they had come to accept that there were many unusual things about him.

"Whatever, whatever. Take them out and we will see."

Ivan took out the crates, still filled with herbs. There were five of them, each two meters long and one meter high and wide. They were made of sturdy wood, but it was still questionable if they could withstand the rats.

Tina looked at Susan and asked, "What do you think? Can they be used?"

"Why do you think I would know?"

"Aren't you a tank? Who if not you would know anything about building a barricade?"

"Just because I am a tank doesn't mean that I know how to build a barricade, that is a completely different thing. Besides how hard can it be? Let's just stack them so that they block enough of the hallway, that one of us can defend."

Since nobody had a better idea, they stacked the crates, leaving only a small space in the middle, where the rats were supposed to be funneled in.

"Ivan you'll block first. If everything goes well we can try to have Susan try it too. I'll try to pull one group, but be ready for more of them to come. Susan and Lars, be ready to stabilize these crates if they threaten to fall over.", Tina distributed the jobs and then waited for everyone to get ready.

"Everyone ready?"

After waiting for the affirmation from everyone, she moved forward until she had a clear line of sight to one of the rat groups. She then nooked an arrow and waited for the other groups to have some distance to the targeted group.

The first group always stayed too close to at least two others, so she discarded it and instead focused on another group. Only after waiting for more than a quarter hour a group had split up enough for her to try to pull it. Pulling back the bowstring, she waited for them to reach the optional position, before releasing the arrow.

The arrow shot towards one of the rats, hitting it squarely on the head, displaying her formidable skill in archery. Having been hit by an arrow out of nowhere, the rat was enraged and with a squeak, it turned towards the source of this offending arrow. Seeing a human that had intruded into their territory, it once again squeaked to gain the attention of the other rats in the group before rushing towards the intruder.

Seeing, that her arrow had the planned effect, Tina hurriedly rushed through the opening between the crates. As soon as she was through, Ivan went forward to block it.

It didn't take the group of rats long to reach them and enraged by the attack on one of theirs, they threw themselves on Ivan, who was in the frontline.

With the practice they had before, they soon made short work out of them.

After that Tina went out to pull the next group, which they then slaughtered. This continued on until the number of rat groups passing through the hall had visibly been reduced.

"Let's take a break.", Ivan said. Even though he had exchanged his position with Susan for a few pulls, he still had to do the most blocking.

The others too were exhausted from fighting so much, so they readily agreed. So they sat down and pulled out some provisions. Ivan still sat in the gap between the crates with one eye focused on the hall, in case that some groups of rats came over.

Luckily nothing happened and after resting for a time they decided to continue their slaughter. Although they had already killed the required amount for the quest, it was still necessary to kill more, so that they could take on the Rat Lord.

This time something went wrong when Tina tried to pull the next group. Instead of pulling only one group, she got the attention of an additional two groups, which had suddenly run out of an entrance.

"Damn. Be careful!", she couldn't help but curse. Even though they were able to easily kill one group, they hadn't yet gone against multiple.

Ivan blocked the rat's trying to get through the gap in the barricade as before, but because there were many more rats this time, the pressure on the barricade was much higher than before, and when some of the rats jumped on the back of their companions to reach the top of the barricade, they crashed against the topmost crates, making them slide slowly towards the defenders.