My arm felt like it was going to fall off as I struggled to breathe in the oven we were in.
We had retreated to the trapped tunnel, which was blocked behind us.
A small mercy.
Stormy had blocked off the entrance in front of us with angled Stone Walls pointed towards us.
Monster after monster swarmed into our position as we rotated every five minutes between Harren and me.
Stormy kept the walls stable while Sam disoriented the monsters rushing in to get us.
Ozy kept Harren and me moving with constant uses of Greater Refresh on top of the potions we had taken.
Alchemical toxicity was becoming an actual concern as the battle dragged on to one hour.
At first, I used a runic circle to unleash a large torrent of flames out of the tunnel entrance. But after ten minutes, it failed.
The Indomitable had unleashed its flame weapon, but it had eventually broken down after seven minutes of continuous use.
"Switch!" Harren yelled and we swapped places.
Leaning against the tunnel wall, I moved backwards. I quickly pulled out water and a Mana potion.
I was running on fumes at this point.
"Flame Lance!"
Stormy incinerated the corpses of monsters that were building up.
Even though building a monster wall might seem useful, the monsters pushing from the other side would crush us, leaving us no room.
Already we had lost a third of the tunnel distance we had in total.
Breathing became difficult as the heat increased, and smoke lingered.
The smell was horrible, but we had to endure it.
The hordes of monsters were never-ending.
At first, I had been trying to count the different types to get a sense of when it would end, but it wouldn't.
Sealing ourselves off would have been foolish.
The monsters would linger outside and possibly batter down any Stone Walls to get to us if there wasn't a path.
Burying yourself was as good as digging your own tomb, not recommended as a hiding strategy.
Harren had been shouting before, but he didn't have the energy to do that anymore.
It was almost time for me to switch back in.
I didn't want to, but there was no other option.
April was trying to fix the war mech's weapons, but it would take time.
The metal was a custom alloy, and overuse had heavily damaged the weapons' internal components.
While she had the tools to fix them, it was a slow and detailed process.
One cannot quickly perform this during battle.
The war mech also couldn't use its melee weapon in the tunnel or maneuver.
"Clear the front," April called out.
She had gone back inside her war mech while I had been fighting.
After two seconds and killing a two-headed snake that had hit me with a burst of fire and lightning, I fell back.
"FAB firing," she called out.
White fiery flames shot forward.
While my arm wanted to fall off, I quickly brought it up and began drawing runes in the air.
It was hard to maintain the precision I needed, but I managed over the course of a minute.
I sent the runic circle and the Mana that composed it flying forward.
It drew in and expelled air.
A massive firestorm erupted, spinning outwards out of the tunnel.
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"Ward."
I blocked the worst of it and stumbled back.
The fire cleared the tunnel, burning the monsters.
It was incredibly hard to breathe, but we didn't have time for half measures.
If this didn't work, then we were all going to die. Smoke and flames spun back into the tunnel as a fire tornado formed outside the entrance and then exploded.
I had taken cover behind a Stone Wall.
Slowly, I pulled myself to my feet.
"Everyone alive?" I called out and then coughed several times from the smoke.
"Gust."
Stormy cleared out the smoke so we could breathe. Everyone looked absolutely miserable.
"Still here," Harren said while leaning on his axe to remain standing.
Using a weapon to help one stand was something that should never be done, since it left a person incredibly vulnerable. Harren doing such a thing showed how exhausted he was.
"My hair," Sam said while moving his hand over this face.
All the bursts of fire had incinerated his hair off his head.
He was now balder than Healer Melon. No eyebrows either.
Ozy landed on a broken Stone Wall and let out a hiss of exhaustion.
My shoulder pauldron had broken off in the fighting.
"That…ack, ack!" Stormy let out a cough.
"I will check the outside; don't lay down and make sure you are breathing properly," I said.
I'm not an expert, but smoke inhalation is hazardous.
I exited the tunnel past heaps of monster corpses.
The chamber was a complete and utter mess, with piles of monsters still smoldering outside the entrance.
My Danger Sense was incredibly quiet now.
I made my way back into the tunnel.
"All clear. We should start collecting the cores," I said, not wanting to do that.
"Can't we rest first?" Sam asked.
"And waste all our hard work? No, let's clear this tunnel. We will drag the corpses outside to clear it out and camp in here. The sooner we get started, the sooner we finish," I said heavily.
I returned to the warmech and started removing my heavy armor.
Harren quickly joined me as he pulled off his armor.
The pieces hit the ground, and I would service them later.
There was no way I was moving about, dragging all that metal on me, while processing so many monsters.
The war mech opened, and April stepped out.
"I will look over your armor," she said, which showed she had her priorities straight instead of dealing with the war mech first.
I set my sword to the side as well.
While it should be fine, having a professional craftsdwarf double-check it after such a battle was important.
Sam and Stormy got to work quickly extracting monster cores, while Harren and I lugged the burnt corpses out of the tunnel and started a new pile of monsters we had already processed.
The pile was away from the tunnel.
After clearing the tunnel, Harren and I extracted the monster corpses.
When we finished with the monsters, we had Sam count and divide the cores.
April had patched Harren and my heavy armor as best as possible.
She was now working on the warmech's weapons.
Stormy was cleaning out the cave of the blood, remaining smoke, and burnt smell as best as possible.
I got to work preparing a meal. Harren was standing guard. Everyone just got to work.
While it was tempting to just collapse, we needed food and a comfortable place to sleep.
Proper food and sleep were incredibly important for recovering one's reserves. Even if we were dead tired, we needed to do all of this.
They cut the vegetables and meat chunks unevenly, and the stew was waterier than normal to make it easier to eat and digest. Everyone came back for the meal.
Each of us had his or her own chair and spatial storage. That was the nice thing about teaming up with other people with strong backgrounds. I wasn't just a pack mule with my spatial storage.
None of us said anything as we ate.
My Mana was incredibly low, but I had regenerated enough since the end of the battle, allowing me to use Clean to remove any lingering grime from myself and the dishes.
Clean was truly the best skill. It couldn't handle anything with active Mana, but it was great for dried blood, dishes, and just general cleaning.
The Cleaning skill and the other skills after that helped me progress the spell skill quite a bit during my time at the College.
Sam then gave us each a pile of Mana cores he had separated, and we put them away in our respective spatial pouches.
"We rest for a full day tomorrow. I will take first watch, then April. I don't think we should move the war mech out," I said.
"That is fine."
It was going to be brutal to take first watch, but Ozy hit me with a Refresh.
That was the only reason I had even considered volunteering. That battle had been way too close.
Even though I had gained a lot of skill levels, what had happened stressed me out massively.
The war mech had screwed us all over.
It had helped, but it had also put out too much Mana exhaust and noise, attracting the hordes of monsters from tertiary chambers.
I didn't think I could get worn down so quickly in combat, but it was a combat that just didn't end.
One wave after another, and the last was absolutely endless.
I had definitely overdrawn my Mana a bit and had the beginning stages of Mana exhaustion.
We would probably need to rest longer than one full day, most likely three.
That would allow the Alchemical toxicity to decrease and heal any lingering effects.
While it would slow us down, I didn't think anyone was ready for more fighting after that nightmare.
Fighting in that tunnel was the worst.
There was no retreat either, which was why I had picked that location.
If we had fought in the open, I knew some of my team members might have tried to run, which would have been the death of us all.
I had considered that as well.
We were forced to fight with everything we had or die.
There might have been other near-death experiences in the past, but this was the first one that truly felt real.
There was no squire, no mother, only my blade and skills between myself and being ripped apart by the dungeon monsters.
Ozy was sleeping as well. He had pushed himself quite hard, and that was the main reason I was standing right now.
As I sat at the tunnel entrance, keeping watch, I scrutinized my heavy armor.
It held together decently, but it needed more serious work after I left the dungeon.
April had done her best, but fixing my armor differed from fixing the war mech.
Although she possessed some general-purpose tools, she lacked the equipment and skill to carefully redraw the runic inscriptions that had suffered slight damage.
The armor still worked and gave me an additional 20 points in my Strength stat. But if there was too much damage, that boost could vanish. The same was true for my helmet, gloves, and boots.
April had patched them up, but a specialist was needed to repair the damaged armor.
My rings and experience-blocking bracelet were fine.
Checking my weapon, I found it was in good condition.
The self-repair functionality was quite useful.
Unfortunately, without a natural treasure from the dungeon, adding such an enchantment on the rest of my equipment wasn't possible.