The further they advanced into the dungeon the more Titan felt eyes watching him.
The space became more open now and the walls had torch lights positioned on the walls from the left and right.
Titan stopped when he felt a shift to the stillness. The others watched him as he frowned.
They faced a large door that was half opened to reveal a deep darkness inside.
Titan ignored the door at first to scan the area around them. The walls, the dark ceiling. He noticed a statute of white marvel gargoyle with long detailed bat like wings on it's back that was positioned above the giant size door facing them.
Finally Titan looked down at the floor. The floor was suddenly a grey smooth marvel. He went down to a squatting position.
Charlie reached over grabbing his wrist and preventing him from touching the floor a few inches in front of them.
“Wait a bit. Ron! See if you can spot the trap. Everybody down.” Charlie ordered.
All six men were low to the floor of the dungeon. They waited as Ronald called to the god of light and revelation.
Titan paid little attention. He looked over at the archer in the group. Hank Buckle. He raised an eyebrow in question.
Titan expanded his power out. His eyes, ears and mind outwardly took in information.
Titan’s eyes spotted a shadow out of place. He nodded to the direction.
Hank slung his bow with a black arrow and let it fly in the direction of the shadow.
The arrow hit the shadow and a scream went out before a goblin body fell to the marvel floor.
A dozen or so arrows flew through the air above their heads.
Titan frowned, glancing back at the floor. He studied it. “Is it always like this?” He asked Charlie.
“No. We would have been dead an hour ago. The guild was ordered by the government to take this job. Not our usual style of dungeon.” Charlie said grimly.
“Why us?” Titan asked in mild curiosity.
“We were the only guild near the dungeon when it went live with a six man team.” Ronald said.
“Likely we weren’t meant to beat the boss but hold off the monsters until the Legendary ranks were brought in from another region.” Charlie said.
“What’s a legendary rank?” Titan asked frowning and looking around.
“Level 60 any class with high level experience in dungeon crawling.” Charlie said.
Suddenly patterns appeared on the floor. Rectangles and empty white spaces.
Titan narrowed his eyes at the entrance of the giant door that was slowly opening wider.
“Are the Bosses usually giant ass monsters that wait in a big room.” He said.
Bob cursed silently. “No. The big ones are in the easy dungeon. The smart ones hide in plain sight.” He said.
Titan nodded. “So we get past the floor but the trap is in the room because the boss is right in front of us.” He said.
“That's right Nephew. Come on Titan, find the Boss.” Charlie said.
Titan took firm hold his Axiom Edge in his hand. His head ached suddenly but he forced aside the pain to find his target.
His eyes locked on a giant gargoyle statute above the door. The eyes were glowing. The eyes hadn’t been glowing before.
Titan froze and he saw the spear in the gargoyle’s hands.
“Above the door. It’s the gargoyle.” Titan whispered.
The gargoyle leaped down to the floor. The storm of arrows flew around in the air above their heads.
Titan and the others didn’t raise until the arrows were gone.
The gargoyle however attacked them with a stone spear it swung around.
Two of the men were hit and went flying toward a wall. The others evaded the attack.
Titans focused his mind, his eyes scanning the body of their enemy.
“Get back Titan. Hold back.” Charlie ordered.
Titan backed up while at the same time dodging goblins that attacked him from behind.
Titan brought them down as he went on instinct. His eyes focused on the movements of the enemy.
“Come on, where is the critical hit? Come on. Think.” Titan said to himself.
The gargoyle twisted in quick movement but his legs gave out for a second and glowed red.
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[Critical Hit: Sight and movements]
Primary attack legs with heavy hammer.
Secondary attack: Attack eyes.
“Ronald, attack the legs. Hank, take out his eyes. Everybody else use distraction.”
“Good job, Titan. Stay out of its reach. Look for other attack points.” Charlie.
Titan did as ordered. He sent his focus out around him taking in information all around him with his senses.
His mind analyzed, processed and measured the damage the crew were doing.
[Enemy Critical Analysis]
Dungeon Boss: Spear Gargoyle
Health points: 360/500
“Keep hitting him. It’s HP points are going down. Hank. Keep shooting for it’s eyes.” Titan said.
Hank was firing off magic arrows at the gargoyle’s eyes.
Ronald couldn’ t get close to the legs to make a critical attack hit.
Titan began to quickly scan his crew for possible uses they could have for a tactical use.
“Shit!” Titan cursed as he couldn’t lock his focus on them long enough to get data.
“Titan. Watch out!” Charlie called out in warning.
The gargoyle made a quick stab move with it’s spear toward Titan.
Titan felt time slow down.
He side stepped the attack. He snatched the spear and took the weapon away.
Titan quickly scanned the gargoyle’s body for weak points. He saw glowing bright red weak spots on the monster’s joints.
“Hank. Shot for the joints. It's close to being taken down.” Titan yelled out as he swung the spear and knocked the gargoyle off its feet.
The crew converged their attack on the creature using all their weapons on the creature to quickly bring it down.
Titan let the spear fall from his hands as he dropped to his knees. His vision was blurry and he had trouble focusing as he fell.
He caught the sound of quick movement behind as he turned and stabbed a goblin in the chest as it swung a knife down at him.
The goblin’s chest was sliced in half by the Axiom Edge. The creature screamed in pain falling over and bleeding out slowly on to thr dungeon floor.
Titan held on to his weapon as he fell on to his back. He was tired out and his head hurt. He felt his weapon warm in his hand and brought it up to his face to see it glowing. “Uncle Charlie, my weapon is glowing again.”
“Oh don’t worry about. It does that when you get a system upgrade. Check your system.”
Titan sighed. “System Menu!”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SYSTEM STATUS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Titan Young
Class: Psi Striker
Level: 3
Focus: 100 / 120
Health: 60 / 100
Primary Attribute:
- Willpower (WIL): 18
Secondary Attributes:
- Strength (STR): 12
- Agility (AGI): 14
- Perception (PER): 16
- Endurance (END): 11
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PASSIVES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Psi Striker Physiology (Active)
→ Physical performance scales with Willpower
- Cognitive Combat Interface (Active)
→ Enhanced threat perception and reaction speed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SKILLS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Neuro-Enhancement]
- Cognitive Overclock (Rank I)
[Weakpoint Analysis]
- Threat Appraisal (Rank I)
[Phase Displacement]
- Blink Step (Rank I)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATUS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Mental Strain: Medium
- Fatigue: Medium
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Titan waved away his screen and he took several breaths to slow down his heart rate.
“Uncle Charlie. You got an extra potion bottle on you?” Titan asked.
“Shit. Sorry. I already gave one to Eddie. Eddie. You’re carrying Titan out.”
Titan sighed. A man with a long jagged scar on his face came over. He grinned at him with a front missing tooth.
“You did a good job kid. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He said.
Eddie quickly grabbed Titan, putting him over his shoulder and started running back for the entrance.
“Don’t worry Titan. We’re going to be at the entrance any moment now.” Eddie said.
“It took us two hours to get to the boss. How the hell are we going to get there so soon.” Titan asked.
Eddie snorted loudly. “Time works funny in a dungeon when you’ve taken the boss out.”
Eddie moved quickly. Titan kept a firm hold on his glowing weapon.
Soon enough Eddie was easily scaling the stone steps to the entrance.
“You're pretty fast.” Titan said.
Eddie snorted in laughter. “Your a pretty quick tactical Psi operator young blood.”
Eddie finally hurried out of the dungeon entrance into the school lunch room.
Titan was laid down as government soldiers crowded around them.
Eddie looked at them. “The boss is dead. I need a potion bottle for my team mate here.”
“What?! You killed the Boss?! Shit. Get this boy a potion bottle.”
Titan glanced up at the owner of the voice.
The man was dressed in a green military uniform with a silver and gold rifle in his hands. He had silver white glowing eyes.
[ SYSTEM STATUS ]
Name: Ned Roggers
Class: Gun Wizard (Rank V)
Level: 60
Focus: 2,060/2,060
Health: 2,090/2,090
Primary Attribute: Willpower: 500
Secondary Attributes:
- Strength (STR): 200
- Agility (AGI): 140
- Perception (PER): 300
- Endurance (END): 500
“Gun wizard?!” Titan said surprised by the class title.
Ned started to turn but he froze and his focus locked on Titan.
“Yes. I am. You're new to Charlie’ Rough Riders. What class are you son?” Ned asked.
“He’s a rookie rogue class. We just took him on as a replacement.” Eddie spoke quickly for Titan.
Ned stared at Titan and then he glanced at the weapon in Titan’s hand.
“Axiom Edge. Good choice for a rogue class. Did you choose it because it felt good in your hand?”
“I chose the weapon as the best selection based on my skill level and it fits my Rogue class.” Titan said.
Ned nodded, reached into his utility belt pocket and took out a round blue bottle and tossed it casually in Titan’s direction..
Titan's eyes tracked the bottle in the air watching the rotation. He used his Axiom Edge to catch the bottle at the bottom with his blade.
Titan used his wrist to flick and bounce the bottle close enough for him to snatch it from the air.
Titan nodded to Ned. “Thank you.” He said and opened the bottle and drank the bottle down.
“Welcome to the ride son.” Ned said.
Ned gave them a quick nod before he took off toward the portal of the dungeon.
Charlie and the crew were coming out at the same time.
Ned stopped him. They spoke close together quietly and then Ned led his own team into the dungeon.