Richard ducks underneath a heavily clawed attack all while his heart thuds against his chest and produces a rhythm of survival in his ears and head. Blake bull rushes into the side of the twin-headed bear-like creature knocking it to the floor with his enhanced attack. Previously thought dead vines wrapped around Blake's arms activate as he will his power over them to strike through the bear turning it to large smoke that floats away further down the hallway.
After such a display, Blake turns and leaps up catching a small bird-like creature with several three-inch stingers along its bottom. Blake's mouth quickly engulfs the creatures head before yanking away revealing for a second a headless creature before it too turns into smoke and floats away. An explosion to the right of them against the rocky surface of the cave wall knocks both to their sides momentarily before they scramble to their feet sprinting off into the seemingly endless tunnels. Blake, who is currently using all fours to run like some sort of wolf, looks back and grimaces before taking a right down another hallway. Richard follows suit doing his best to keep up despite his heavy breathing.
"E-Enough!" Richard says leaning against the wall for support trying to catch his breath, "I... I can't keep this up..."
"Oh don't tell me the adrenaline has already run off?! We're only on the second floor!" Blake says standing to his full height also breathing heavily.
"My point exactly!"
A might roar is heard behind the duo and a shield of vines quickly take the brunt of another explosion but the heat is enough to make Blake look away and Richard flinch and move away. Richard reaches into his pack and throws Blake a granola bar laced with various berries in it. Black catches it in his mouth and takes off running into the smoke laughing like a psychopath.
Richard looks around and spots a few green fluorescent mushrooms and decides to use the full extent of his green thumb powers. He's seen them here and there and even the larger version of them and what all they can do. His hands begin to glow green as he hovers them over the fungus while crouched and trying his best to ignore the sound of fighting behind him. A task harder than it sounds as Blake sounds to be in a lot of pain suddenly.
He hears a loud thump from behind him before he sees Blake fly a bit down the hallway past him. Richard's heart sinks as he looks back to see the creature oozing out some sort of black tar from holes riddled into it by vines. He checks the creature's health seeing it as just below half of his entire health bar. But the most terrifying thing about this creature is that despite his level eight appearance, he hits like a truck. The creature in question also happens to be an Elite. Richard yanks the more grown fungus out of the ground and chucks it at the wolf.
"Bombs away!" Richard yells taking off towards Blake who seems to be slowly standing up.
A quarter of his health bar still remains and neither of them knows what will happen when it hits zero. Richard rushes into Blake picking him up at his waist and throwing him over his shoulder as Black mumbles out medic. Behind them, an explosion is heard as the mushrooms seem to start growing brighter and brighter after being ripped from the ground. The wolf howls either in pain, anger, or annoyance.
Maybe even all three.
"I'm not feeling too hot anymore..." Blake says before hurling over Richard's shoulder causing Richard to shudder out of disgust and fear.
Fear proceeds to win over as Richard watches as all of Blake's buffs and a portion of his health disappears. A portion of almost nothing is not great in this situation for sure.
"We got to get out of here..."
"N-No! W-We got this... Put me down I-I can take him. I-I-I can k-keep g-g-going..."
Richard turns right down another seamlessly long hallway at a T-section just as a beam of light flies past where they used to be causing an explosion and sending them both tumbling into the wall and onto the floor. Richard's ears continue to ring as he stumbles his way up to his feet using the nearest wall. Blake seems to also be having trouble as he is currently curled into a ball covered in debris and clutching at his stomach.
" Richard says making his way towards Blake, "Damnit! Are you okay!?"
Blake doesn't respond, or he does and Richard can't hear him. A howl breaks the ringing in his ears. Richard spins around to see the werewolf knocked down more health, but still doing better than the two combined. The werewolf seems to regard both of them looking between the two heavily injured Champions before smiling a very wide grin. The creature gives off something of a chuckle as it walks towards the two. The creature lifts up its right paw up letting its claws run along the wall carving deep into it as if to show how sharp they really are.
Richard starts to freeze up seeing this display. He knows he should run, but at this point, he wouldn't get far. Between the power that it can shoot from its mouth as well as its speed, he wouldn't get far without Blake attempting to hold it off. Blake seems to be out of commision for now recovering from "over-eating". He also can't bring himself to leave Blake like this either.
"I... I'm going to pray if I make it out of this. I don't know to who, but I'm going to pray so hard."
Richard extends his arms and a large cooking fire appears between him and the wolf. The creature in question flinches back at the bright flames and growls. The werewolf proceeds to start inhaling preparing another one of his ranged attacks. Richard lets his instinct take over and runs forward through his own fire. He can feel the flames lick at him, and if part of him was catching fire he shows no sign of noticing.
The wolf seems shocked for a second before getting over it as it knows that Richard can't do anything or hasn't done anything this entire fight. It prepares to fire to kill as Richard's eyes open in shock as he watches an oven fall onto the wolf's head as it's maw opens. Wolf looks confused as something heavy hits his head and closes his mouth just as his power is fired. Confused goes to fear as he realizes what's been done.
Richard averts his head as the wolf's head completely explodes with the upper part of his body. It's lower half stumbles forward before falling on to the dirt as a corpse before sinking into the floor as a liquid. Richard stares at the destroyed oven in awe. He had never considered to convince himself that an oven can be considered a cookery. He also didn't expect it to work either.
Richard falls to his knees as the liquid seems to start swirling and pooling together. A box alerts the duo that the next floor is open and is labeled [Boss Room]. It states that alternatively, the party can take this time to leave the dungeon and go through it again at a later date or spend this time to recover before attempting the boss. Richard crawls his way over to the large fire and props himself against the wall sighing heavily. Nearby Blake seems to have fallen asleep and seems to be recovering health.
Richard checks his own stats and sees that both him and Blake have received the status condition [wounded] which states that they won't be able to fully recover until the wounds have been taken care of. Both of them seem to be sitting on nothing but debuffs. Despite this, Richard feels a calm drawing over him despite this ridiculous situation and soon finds himself in an unconscious state as well.
Richard frantically collects what he can from the corpses around the duo. Blake crouches down and pokes the body of the fallen Deerfolk and Ponykin. They had all been killed most likely fighting whatever lurks deeper in the darkness before the two. Blake holds a glowing stick in his right hand that he stole from Richard's makeshift fire from their 'rest point' of sorts.
"Do you think they went peacefully?" Blake asks looking over his shoulder as Richard collects more mushrooms and items off the discarded bags and bodies.
"I hope so. Whatever did this doesn't seem to be around at the moment either. I just wonder if they were Champions..."
"I doubt it... I'm sure that as Champions dying won't come so easily to us."
"... We almost just did." Richard says staring at Blake who stares right back owlishly.
"Did we?" Blake asks tilting his head.
Richard snorts and stands up fully. He looks around the damaged tunnel again taking in the various caved in walls, scratch marks, and what looks to be magical scorch marks here and there. Magic users and probably fighters. Whatever they had is no longer here other than a few closed bottles both marked and unmarked. Blake wanted to taste test the unmarked, but Richard suggested finding something along the lines of a blacksmith or at least be close to a healer before he goes experimenting.
Blake proceeds to poke around with Richard's bag eliciting a sigh from the owner. He can't help but wish he had more experience dealing with kids than upper-crust assholes.
"So what are these for again?"
"They're for helping us stay alive in here. Let's just say that there are a few loopholes I wanna see if I can exploit. I noticed earlier that I didn't get an error message when using the shrooms to attack shadow warrior earlier. I figured if I just used ingredients to fight or somehow weaponizing food, I should be in the clear for helping with frontline stuff."
"Wait, so that's what that explosion was? I thought you were just using some magic you've been holding back."
Richard sighs and rubs the bridge between his eyes and nose, "We've been over this Blake... we can't do things out of our categories despite whatever they tell you."
"But I reeeaaaaalllly think I'm starting to get the hang of it. I just need like like three maybe four more weeks!"
"Of course of course. Just expect me to come telling you I told you so." Richard says pulling the bag and mushroom away from Blake.
"And you better be prepared for when I do the same!"
"Oh, I'm shaking in my boots," Richard says mockingly making his away from the skeletons.
Blake runs off ahead laughing on all fours. Richard chuckles and shakes his head while glancing behind him. Richard just can't quite figure out if he's laughing at Blake's antics or his own anxiety over being so calm about any of this from the corpses to the fact that he could die down here never knowing anything about anything of this unique situation.
"So this is it right? I expected a little bit more of a challenge along the way." Blake says disappointedly.
"Yea well. Don't jinx us quite yet. We still gotta deal with the gate and whatever keeps making those bodies."
"I'm sure we'll be fine!" Blake says walking up to the ominous black door looming in front of the two.
"Murphy's law..." Richard mumbles following behind the all to eager young buck.