SPENDING MY RETIREMENT IN A GAME

Chapter 935 The Hallway

Before long, the ant monsters stopped coming. It was getting easier and easier to handle them all, until finally, the last of the bunch was slain. And together with that process came a notification that congratulated people on successfully clearing that floor. It was a message that Eisen had completely blocked out at this point, but the others seemed to have gotten it.

Now that all the monsters were killed, it was time to collect the drops. Brody already said that he collected the boss monsters' drops, and Eisen quickly sent out a swarm of small golems to grab all of the things dropped by the ants. As that was happening, he quickly started getting all of the deployed weapons and walls back together. By the time Brody had made his way back, everything was almost packed back up.

"Yo," Brody smiled, slightly stretching his neck, "That all went a lot better than I thought it would."

"Was it? How manageable were the boss monsters?"

"Frankly, they were kinda... disappointing. The ant queen I can understand, 'cause she was obviously weaker in exchange for spawning a constant stream of ants, but even the worm was kind of boring. It was just kind of big, nothing else. Its body wasn't even particularly tough to cut through."

"Oh, really?" Eisen smiled lightly, curiously looking at the sword sheathed on Brody's hip, "Did you get to use the cursed sword? Do you think it was a big change in actual combat?"

The demon orc halfling thought about the question for a moment, "I think so? It was one of the best swords I've ever used, that's for sure. Very simple and straightforward, just how I like it, and just extremely good at the few things it does."

"Great. If possible, just keep using it for a while and then tell me if you notice anything that can be improved, or if you figure out whato ther curses I could possibly add onto weapons like this for you," the old man explained. Brody nodded, looking toward one of the tunnels.

"By the way, I'm pretty sure I found the exit already, so we should just try to head over there and get out of there when we've got everything together," he explained, then letting out a long sigh, "If things keep going this way, then this dungeon should be... managable. But it's going to take a while, maybe even longer than we both thought."

Eisen raised a brow, slowly looking over to Bree, "What do you think?"

The half-fey quickly came over and thought aobut it for a second, "We spent one and a third days on the first zone, and if the time we spend on a floor scales with the 'difficulty' extrapolated from the amount of mana on each floor... no, because I fele like we'll get to areas that are easier to traverse, and since our goal is to pierce the dungeon to the lowest floor..." she started biting her thumb's nail as she thought, "I'm going to estimate around 20 days. That should be the higher end as well. I can give an estimate for each zone after the first floor of that zone, if you want."

Both Eisen and Brody were a bit surprised. 20 days was a lot more manageable than they thought it would be. The old man slowly nodded, "Yeah, that should be pretty helpful. For now, let's just get going into the next floor. How far away is the exit, Brody?"

"Around a twenty minute walk."

"... How big are the tunnels?"

"Oh. Okay, yeah, if we do it like that, it'd be a two or three minute walk, let's do that. The tunnels are big enough for you," Brody laughed a bit, and the old man nodded. While the rest of the folded-down structures were put back into his item storage, Eisen got out an extremely simple item. It was technically a backpack, but it was more like a house with straps on it that Eisen could wear in his giant form. Depending on how much space there was to move around in this dungeon, they were going to try and push through exactly like this to save as much time as they possibly could.

Eisen let the structure unfold and waited for everyone to get inside and settle in. There was magic inside of the building that stabilized it from their perspective. With gravity magic in particular, it could be made that they wouldn't even feel any shaking or awkward movement, so Eisen could move as fast as he wanted to.

The old man quickly grew in size, and carefully picked up the 'backpack' and put it on.

"Everything alright in there?"

Brody, peaking out of the hatch on the flat 'roof', quickly nodded, "Yup, everyone's settled in," he explained, and climbed onto Eisen's shoulder so that he could guide him. Like that, Eisen quickly started moving through the tunnels. As Brody said, it took just a couple of minutes to reach the bottom.

Eisen quickly let everyone out of the backpack, shrunk back down, and the group made their way through the stairway to the next floor. It was quite a long walk, surprisingly. Usually, these stairways were little less than gateways to move from one extradimensional space to another. The size and scale and space that dungeons took up didn't have to make sense after all. Each floor was basically its own small pocket dimension. Otherwise, how would it fit inside of Fafnir's body?

That meant that it was very likely these stairs were put here intentionally, and that they technically moved into the next floor long ago. It was quite the massive switch-up compared to what they were dealing with before. Instead of the ant-dug tunnels from before now, to stone-brick floors and walls. They soon got to the bottom of the stairs, and just like the stairway, it was just a long tunnel that didn't seem to come to an end anytime soon.

Bree stepped forward and scanned the area.

"It really is just this one hallway... that's weird," she explained, "Maybe this dungeon isn't as 'simple' as we thought it would be. But... it looks more like the dungeon master is trying to make the dungeon unfair and as annoying to beat as possible."

"What makes you say that?" Eisen wondered. He agreed, but he figured that Bree saw something down here that made her think this.

"I wasn't able to see the end of the hallway, but periodically, there are these magic traps set up. They're 'force' traps, that basically just push something forward. They're rings around the whole hallway, and with how they're set up... they're just made to push people back from coming through," Bree explained, quickly showing the 3D version of the map through the item Eisen made. It seemed like that would make sense, but when Eisen saw exactly how everything was set up, he quickly disagreed.

"No, I don't actually think that's it... Brody, put up your shield. The strongest one you've got," Eisen said, and Brody didn't need to hesitate at all. He opened his weapon storage, pulling out a massive tower shield that nearly took up the entire hallway. It was made by layering multiple innately magical materials that could absorb shock perfectly, redirecting it into the ground instead of to the user that was holding onto the shield.

"So, why exactly did you have me do that?" he asked curiously, and the old man sighed.

"Because I know exactly what this hallway is. The force-traps aren't meant to slow us down, they're meant to speed something else up," he explained, and Brody's eyes widened.

"Are you saying we're in the barrel of a fucking gun?"

"We're in the barrel of a fucking gun, yes," Eisen replied, "I don't know what's going to activate it, but that's clearly what's going on here."

The old man looked around, past the edges of the shield, trying to see the flow of magic. There was a small trigger zone just a few steps forward. Eisen nodded at Brody, directing him forward. As they came closer, Eisen did boost his size a little bit and helped out pushing against the shield, just in case this was going to be too much for just Brody to hold back against. It was impossible to make a shield that could absorb all impact, after all, and if they were unlucky, the remaining force that was brought onto Brody could push him back and make everyone else vulnerable.

And then, they entered the trigger zone. Almost instantly afterward, Eisen felt the impact in his whole body. His feet dug into the ground as he tried to stop Brody and himself from being thrown away, but they were able to hold out. Eisen looked again, and the trigger zone was now on cooldown, so he quickly walked around. A massive metal ball that almost took up the entire hallway was now right in front of them.

"Urgh, great," Eisen groaned, as he pushed the ball away from the shield that he had made, "There's a massive dent in this now. It can take maybe two... no, three more of these before it's done."

This was really annoying, just as Bree said. Clearly, the dungeon master put some thought into the floors after all, and didn't just leave them all as defaults. Maybe that in itself was a trick to some degree. But even so, it was likely that there were just some of these floors scattered throughout, and that the rest of the floors were still a bit more basic.

Right as Eisen thought so, he could feel something vibrating by his right hand. As he looked at the metal ball, he watched as a swarm of small insects was burrowing its way out through the metal.

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