“A new objective?” Nathan asked.

  “Seems like it,” answered RedReaver. “How are we supposed to ‘secure’ the mine? Are there more of these giant lizards around? Honestly, if there is, I don’t want to fight them.”

  The others didn’t disagree.

  Nathan summarized. “So, the kobolds own this area uncontested and are probably quite numerous. One day, they discover a breach in the lower levels as these bigger lizards are digging in. They fight for their territory, and while losing a lot of man… eh… lizard-power, they manage to kill or chase away the intruders. Fearing a new intrusion, they pull back from the lower tunnel and decide to carpet the area with traps. Then we come along, kill the rest of their already depleted tribe, and inherit their big lizard problem. Right?”

  The others nodded.

  “I suspect their skirmish also continued further in. I can scout ahead a bit, but let’s see if we can find anything of value here first. The big sword might be of value, so I’ll grab that.”

  The group scattered and started to loot the corpses and check for treasure.

  It didn’t take long before Margos got the attention of the others. “There’s something here. A box. Looks to be made of plastic, so probably from the miners. It’s locked, though.”

  Ashira rushed over and started to fiddle with the lock. “And… voila. I’m starting to get the hang of this.” Smugly, she opened the lid and picked up some of its contents – a grey clay brick.

  “Is that… plastic explosives?” Margos looked slightly worried.

  “I don’t know. Here, check this out.” She flipped the brick over her shoulder in the direction of a very surprised Margos.

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed as he juggled the brick a bit before managing to get a secure grip on it. “You trying to get us all killed?”

  “Relax. I’ve seen in a movie once that explosives can’t go off unless they have some sort of trigger mechanism.”

  Nathan picked up a brick of his own. “That is generally true for plastic explosives like C4 and Semtex, while nitroglycerin-based explosives are a bit more... erratic. Let’s see what this is.”

  [Unstable plastic explosive]

  Rare Item – Tool

  ?/5 durability

  A high-yield explosive that normally should be triggered by an initiator. Old age and other external factors have made this item unstable. If its durability reaches zero, it will explode. If removed from its place of origin, its durability will be reduced by one every 1-2 hours. Personal storage devices will not stop the deterioration.

  “Ah, but this is not ordinary explosives, it seems. It could actually explode if mishandled. Please handle it with care… from now on.”

  Ashira’s eyebrows rose, and her face went white as she inspected the brick herself. “Oh. Sorry.” She carefully stood up and backed away from the box with her hands raised.

  Nathan took her place and checked out the rest of the content. “The good news is that we probably have what we need to secure the mine. There are more than enough explosives and detonators here that we can create a cave-in.”

  RedReaver liked the sound of that. “Thank Christ! I’m sick of this whole quest. Darkness and traps are not my thing. Let’s just blow some shit up and go home.”

  “Not yet. I want to see what is further in first. I know it’s a long shot, but does any of you have any experience using explosives?”

  They all looked at each other and shrugged. “I’ve used firecrackers,” RedReaver finally said.

  “Good for you.” Nathan sighed. “I suggest you continue the looting while I do some scouting. I’ll try to be fast, and then we can finish this up when I get back.”

  There were no disagreements, so Nathan left them to it and quietly snuck forward.

  He didn’t have to go far before the tunnel opened into a natural cavern, and he had to take a moment to admire his surroundings. There were luminous growths along the walls and roof giving meager but sufficient green and yellow light. There were both stalactites and stalagmites, and he could hear low splats as water dripped from above. It gave off a calm and serene feeling.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  That lasted until he saw the bodies. There weren’t as many nor as concentrated as before, but there were enough of them. If Nathan were to guess, it looked like they had tried to ambush the intruders. At first, he thought they hadn’t been successful at all, but as he started to follow the cave downward on what appeared to be a natural path, he found larger bodies as well. If he were to guess, he’d say that he found 5 or 6 dead kobolds for every large lizard, so while they took a lot of punishment, they dished some back as well.

  He stopped at two of the larger lizards and picked up their weapons – another two-handed sword and a greataxe. They were common weapons, so they weren’t anything special, but even so, they were probably worth significantly more than the kobold weapons.

  After walking for 15 minutes, a slight movement ahead caught his attention. He immediately froze and scanned the area by moving his eyes only, trying to see what moved. It took him a while before another slight movement made him aware of a big lizard standing still with its arms crossed further ahead. Knowing where he was, Nathan was able to pull back a bit and found a different path that allowed him to move closer while staying out of sight. He slowly crept forward until he found a suitable place to take a closer look.

  The creature, which was equal in physique to the specimens they’d seen earlier, stood with its back against a wide chasm, guarding what looked to be a primitive rope bridge. The bridge was anchored to several rocks and stalagmites, with two ropes going over the chasm; one to walk on, and one to hold on. Nathan couldn’t see any other way across, so he was curious to discover how they first managed to create the bridge. Perhaps the chasm wasn’t as deep as he first thought? But if so, why did they need the bridge at all?

  Questions for later. What he had to decide now was what to do with the creature, and to do that, he first had to find out what he faced.

  Lizardman warrior

  Level 10, Monster

  Health 21/21

  Damage Resistance: 1

  Lizardman! Simple enough, but if there were any doubt that this was a different race than the kobolds, this confirmed it. And a level 10, to boot. Not impossible, but certainly not easy. Like some of the others, this lizardman also favored the greatsword, which he had strapped across his back. He could probably do a lot of damage with that sword, and Nathan was in no rush to discover just how much. But perhaps there was another way.

  He looked around and found a way he probably could sneak even closer. Dropping low, he crawled around wide and then back again toward the path, taking his time. He ended up around 15 meters away from the lizardman, crouched behind a large rock. He didn’t dare to pop out and take a look so close, so he just had to assume that the enemy remained in the same place.

  Now it was time for a gamble. This could turn out to be the dumbest thing he has ever done, but if nothing else, it would be great entertainment for the people watching. He carefully put down his spear, picked up a rock about the size of a can of soda, felt the weight of it, and lobbed it as far as he managed, aiming to at least clear the chasm.

  He didn’t know if he succeeded or not, but the rock made a lot of noise as it bounced around a bit, the sound echoing around in the cavern, increasing the effect. Now was the moment of truth. Before the reverberate had died down, he picked up his spear and sprinted out of cover.

  The gamble had paid off. When hearing the commotion behind him, the lizardman had turned around to check and was therefore unaware of the man charging full speed towards his back.

  Nathan tried to run lightly so that he didn’t give himself away too soon, but speed and power were the priority. He could aim for the back of the head for a critical hit, but doing a lot of damage was not the goal. Gripping his spear as hard as he could, he put all his weight behind his attack as he struck the lizardman in the midsection just as it was about to turn back.

  Despite the weight difference between the two, the surprise and power behind the attack caught the lizard flatfooted and drove it forward towards the ledge. It hissed in pain and flailed around searching for something to stop its advance, but there was nothing there to grasp. For a short moment it looked like it would be able to halt its movement, but Nathan used the spear as a fulcrum and gave it a final nudge over the edge. Both the lizard and Nathan’s spear disappeared into the darkness below.

  Nathan stepped forward to see how deep the chasm was, but despite his earlier worries about the depth, the light didn’t reach far enough down to see all the way down. The yells of the lizard went quiet as he fell, but Nathan didn’t hear any sound indicating that he had hit the bottom. He wondered if it could be bottomless and opened his log to see if there were any hints there. There weren’t, but as he looked, a new entry showed up.

  [Attack] You hit [Lizardman warrior] for 5 piercing damage (6[d8]-1).

  [Attack] You hit [Lizardman warrior] for 197 blunt damage (198[23d20]-1). It dies. You gain 100 XP.

  Note to self. Do not fall down the chasm. That was quite some damage, and apparently, throwing the creature to its death counted as a hit, so he got the credit. He also noticed that the rest of the party didn’t get to share the XP. Fair enough.

  As he stood and looked at his log, he suddenly heard sounds of alarm from the other side of the chasm. He looked just in time to dodge an arrow from another lizardman. Deciding that it was time to pull back, he pulled his old trusty [Shoddy dull axe] from his inventory and started to hack at the anchors of the bridge. As he did so, the sounds of alarm increased on the other side, and pretty soon two lizards were trying to hit him. He moved back and forth erratically while working. It didn’t take many strikes to cut through the rope, and when the final anchor snapped, the whole bridge fell away from this side of the ledge.

  Nathan rushed back into cover but got hit by an arrow just before getting to safety, leaving him with half of his initial health pool. However, the job was done, and he left the growls and yelling behind and jogged back to his team, confident that there wouldn’t be any more enemies.