Lily's Smile

Congealed blood splattered against the stone wall, making a moist slapping sound. Steam rose from the blood coating, filling the corridor with the stink of burning flesh. Lily and the team were making short work of the weak goblins. It was a one-sided massacre. Goblins desperately fought for their lives, unable to flee. Lily was covered in hot blood which was quickly evaporating off of her as her body heat increased more and more with the drawn-out genocide. She slowly walked towards a group of goblins who were desperately clawing at a wall, trying anything to avoid the acolyte of hate approaching them. Without so much as blinking Lily raised her sword, pausing for a moment before bringing it down on the goblins, ending their miserable lives. Lily stared at the bodies of the ruined goblins. Rel tiptoed around the many corpses of goblins, trying to not get blood on her white and gold robe.

“I’m going to be sick.” Rel held her mouth, her nausea from the pools of blood and smell of flesh forcing its way up.

Lily sighed, turning towards Rel and giving her a small smile.

“You get sick every time we kill monsters, you don’t need to feel empathy for them, especially these ones. Afterall, they were born in the labyrinth by magic. They hardly even count as living creatures.” Lily shrugged slightly.

“Killing should always feel wrong, even if you kill your worst enemy.” Rel recited.

Ardi and Manrin walked towards Rel and Lily. Ardi patted Rel on the head, to which Rel recoiled, giving him a disgusted look.

“Okay, my bad.” Ardi said with a tint of sadness.

The group looked towards the dark stone corridor in front of them, at some point in the distance the corridor disappeared into a sea of darkness.

“We should almost be there, how is everyone doing on magic power?” Ardi asked.

“I’m fine!” Rel said happily.

“Of course you are, you haven’t done anything.” Manrin butted in, pushing his glasses up.

Rel stared daggers at Manrin, although they seemed to simply bounce off of his thick glasses.

“’I’m good.” Lily said.

“Good, let’s do this, same way as last time.” Ardi said as he began walking forward.

The team had worked their way through the ten levels of goblins, easily pushing to the floor guardian. The guardian of the tenth floor was a goblin king. A goblin who commanded many other goblins. This floor was difficult for magicians who focused on single target combat; however, this team had no such weakness. The team approached a cavern with wood beams surrounding it. Infront of the cavern was a goblin tiki, a warning to stay away. The team looked at one another and then stepped forward into the floor guardian’s room. The group walked down the long wood lined hallways until they saw an opening into another room. In the room atop a wooden throne a large goblin sat. The goblin was resting its head on its hand, staring directly at the group. It had a bored look on its face that slowly turned to a menacing grin. The team stepped into the large room. On both flanks of the goblin king, and in front of it, legions of goblins dutifully stood in formation.

The goblin king flicked his hand, ordering his legions forward. The group of challengers crouched down, getting into position to quickly move. Rel moved to the back of the group and Lily and Ardi moved forward taking the vanguard. Manrin sat in the middle, starting a quiet chant. Ardi and Lily both crouched down even more, building up their kinetic energy before bursting to opposite sides of each other. At incredible speed the two created a pincer on either side of the goblin legions. The plan was to force the legions in as close as possible to each other. Once they were clumped up Manrin would unleash a huge spell to kill them all.

“Upon my feet enchant the will of the wind and push me forward, Wind Sheet!” Ardi yelled out casting a wind spell on his feet to boost his movement speed even more and grant him more stability.

Ardi found himself completely on the side of the leftmost legion. He began throwing out poison daggers and casting darkness spells to entangle and frighten the legion. The legion focused their attention on him. Goblin archers fired off arrows while goblin legionnaires attempted to fillet Ardi with spears. Ardi used quick-chant wind magic to fend off the arrows and darkness magic to confuse the legionaries so that they were not able to accurately stab at him with their spears. Ardi bounced around the goblin warriors stabbing them in the neck and keeping his distance from any attempts to grapple him. He slowly pushed the legion back further and further towards the other group of goblins.

Lily landed at the side of the right legion. Her body was already extremely hot from her prior battles, and steam let off from her skin. The goblins turned to face her but were too slow.

“FIRE LANCE!” Lily yelled.

Her sword started to whistle and glowed white before shooting off a mass of flames at the goblin legion, incinerating everything in front of her sword. The goblins didn’t even attempt to fight back, but instead fell back to regroup, trying to find some way to defend against the unbearable heat of Lily’s flames. The two goblin legions had merged into the third as they had been pushed back into each other.

“Manrin?” Ardi yelled out a question.

Manrin’s eyes had been closed as he was chanting. They viciously flickered open, and he held out his large wooden staff.

“MAGNIFY!” He yelled.

Suddenly moisture from the walls of the cavern and from the air around started to condense and form a bubble in front of Manrin. The bubble of water flattened and created multiple stacks of thin sheets of water. The goblin king eyed Manrin before suddenly showing a sign of panic on his face. He stood up from his throne, but it was too late. Rel stepped next to Manrin and held her scepter next to his staff.

“FLASH!” Rel chanted her innate affinity to improve its power, creating a burning, blinding light.

The solar ray of Rel’s empowered flash spell passed through the thin sheets of water, magnifying down into a thin beam of light. The beam of light struck the goblin king square in the head, burning through and sizzing the wall behind him in barely a moment. After Manrin’s internal count had reached the predetermined point, he widened the lenses of his magnification spell. The light changed from a thin beam to a column. The packed goblin legions ignited, caught in the light beam. Screams of the monsters echoed throughout the cavern as they perished in the extreme heat and light. After a moment, silence.

Rel’s light faded. The group had all hidden their faces behind their arms, keeping themselves from being blinded. As the scene in the floor guardian’s room was revealed to them it became apparent that their strategy had been extremely effective, if not slightly cruel. Rel retched, as she normally did. Lily grinned, while Ardi and Manrin simply traced their eyes to the floor exit, ready to move on. Lily walked towards the throne that the goblin king had ruled from. She crouched down next to its burnt corpse and looked it over. The rest of the group was unsure of what she was thinking about at that time.

The group had explored the labyrinth enough to be confident of their skills. The next ten floors and its floor guardian would perhaps be the easiest of all, after all, the next ten floors took place in a dark forest, the divine domain of the all-powerful nature user, Manrin. Manrin adjusted his glasses. He knew that his time was up to become the star of the show. While he was extremely reserved, the truth was he was actually quite a narcissist, and would jump at the chance to show off his power. Internally Manrin smirked to himself. However, he would never show such an emotion on the outside. Afterall, it would be quite unbecoming of a noble such as himself.