A New World, an immersive game experience

"Still no new indications?" Myropsis asked after a few minutes of walking in the mines, as the outside light was starting to not be enough to see.

"Not sure if it can't search caves or what is going on. So we should be careful." Eldrian replied while summoning three balls of light. One he sent to the front, another he floated over them, and the third he sent to the back. Giving light to their entire surroundings.

"Hah, even just this ability is quite useful. Even if you can't fight you're a keeper." Someone in the group commented, quickly gaining the approval of the other adventurers. Naturally, they knew who he was and Eldrian had also explained that he was currently weakened similar to when someone was resurrected.

"Stay focused! We do not know when we will come on the enemy." Myropsis reprimanded, her acting like a leader after yesternight nearly caused Eldrian to burst out in laughter. And knowing her normal personality made this even funnier.

Two hours later they still had not run into any enemies. And finally, Eldrian got the option to search a new map area. Doing just that, he was stunned by the sheer amount of red dots. However, he soon discovered that the map was multi-layered.

"Seems there are a bunch of possible enemies in the mines. I can't really see their locations due to all the possible levels they might be on." Eldrian said, keeping his voice low so only Myropsis could hear him.

"How many?"

"Thousands..." Trying to discern the amount in a single level Eldrian continued, "Maybe around a hundred per level." He then went to the next step and inspected a bunch of the red dots, wishing he could rotate the map like a 3D model to get a vertical view to limit the cost. Sadly, he could only work from a 2D model.

"It isn't just undead though," Eldrian commented after a while. "It seems that there are also kobolds, goblins, and even some other monsters I've never heard of... There are even reavers."

Stopping, Myropsis frowned. "I think it is going past the mine."

"Is that possible?"

"No idea, it's your ability." She countered, "To my knowledge, the mine should only have three more levels before we reach the bottom where most of the mining is taking place. It should most certainly not have any monsters like reavers inhabiting it. Unless..."

Shaking her head she denied this option, it was not long enough for monsters to move in. There should only be undead in the mine.

Nodding, Eldrian prepared himself for combat as did everyone else after she informed them that they would soon come face to face with the enemy.

The first encounter was with a group of twenty skeletons, all of whom were easily taken care of by a fire spell of Myropsis's. Some might say using fire in a tunnel or mine is a bad idea, and they would be correct.

Retreating to avoid the smoke, everyone reflected on this.

"If we can't use fire it is going to be troublesome." Someone commented, few had experience fighting in caves and none of them were confident fighting the undead without it.

"Don't you all know Thora?" Eldrian asked.

"They do," Myropsis replied, "However, yours is far more effective than ours."

'Right, I forgot about all my bonuses.' Thora after all only did 10 damage, but when Eldrian cast it thanks to his race and hidden class, even with his reduced stats it still did 42 damage. And due to skeletons affinity, it took double damage from decomposition spells. Meaning, that even weakened he did 84 damage with one spell.

The group had a total of four mages, with the rest all being melee-focused. Though everyone had an understanding of magic with their Tiers being between 1 and 3, it still meant that their prowess with spells was lacking. Severely lacking compared to him.

Even the strongest in the group only had Tier 4 in both melee and magic, bringing her intelligence. to around 230. With that, her spell would deal only 46 in the end. Half of what Eldrian was capable of in his weakened state.

Normally Eldrian needed a few casts to kill most lower undead, that was not a problem for him. After all, he could instant cast the spell.

Now he needed to cast it four to even ten casts, but that was still no problem. He could accomplish that in just two to six seconds. Just needing to go through the motions to cast it, but not having an actual cast time and no cooldown.

For others, it took 1.5 seconds if they had no distractions to cast the spell once. And they had to wait 4 seconds to try again. Knowing this, clearly they could not rely on it as Eldrian does.

They would need to work together to kill a single undead, maybe they could manage to kill two if they were well organized. But Eldrian doubted it, and while Myropsis would likely be able to kill one on her own, Eldrian was unsure if she could cast Thora like him or was still constrained by the standard cooldown and cast time.

He did not fully understand why it was present for the NPCs, but he assumed it was because they needed to recover after casting a spell. Some sort of mental fatigue or pause before they could reform the spell as intended. He was not sure, but it had to be something like that. Like waiting for stirred water to come to a calm before stirring it again.

So it was only natural that they relied on fire spells instead that did over double the damage to undead, and just did more damage overall. Or on divine spells. But due to the coming refugees, no divine caster could be spared. The city was already very short-handed in the area of healing.

With fire not usable and divine spells unavailable to the group, it was normal that they would feel less confident.

Eldrian could understand why, not only were skeletons hard to damage if you did not know where to attack- again something only he in the group was capable of telling. The weakest ones had around 200HP, which was manageable, but the strongest had over 600HP. It could take ages for them to kill it without knowing where to attack, needing to rely on luck to hit the right spot.

While their strength and speed were not too great, it was still hard for normal people to face off against skeletons due to this. Eldrian had totally forgotten about this, having gotten so used that lower undead were simply fodder to him. 'I need to be mindful, I can't become overconfident again.'

"Don't you know some spells other than fire that can deal with undead?" Eldrian asked Myropsis while the rest were trying to come up with a plan.

Of course, Eldrian had also summoned a breeze to clear the smoke from the area. Aeraki was more than just a spell he used to cool down his room, though it was how he used it most often.

AN: A big thanks to everyone who continues to support the story by simply reading on Web, voting for the story, or sharing comments. It is all greatly appreciated.