After the zombie pig’s corpse had disappeared into the environment, I took my time after the next group of enemies we faced, observing their scattered bodies. It took a little longer than it had with the boss, but eventually, they disappeared as well, absorbed by the environment.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they were absorbed by the dungeon, whatever that might mean in this context. Possibly that the dungeon was trying to conserve material or power or something along those lines, keeping us from carrying out the bodies of our fallen foes to reuse them later. It would fit with my understanding of conjuration magic, the mechanism that caused my Ice to slowly vanish back into the Astral River, instead of melting into water, could be at play here, or at least something equivalent to it. If the monsters were constructs created from Astral Power, keeping them within the boundaries of the dungeon might enable it to re-absorb the power used to make them, enabling the dungeon to repopulate itself easier. But I was only speculating at this point, my hypothesis far outpacing what I could reasonably infer from known data, even if I believed my reasoning followed logically.

Either way, whatever happened with the bodies didn’t directly concern us. Even if the dungeon would grow more dangerous in the future by recycling its constructs, it would only help us. More danger meant higher level, meant better rewards, a cycle that was beneficial for those at the top of the power curve. I merely had to make sure nobody could outpace our own power, even if they had the benefit of higher manpower. And so, we simply considered killing and dodging our way through the dungeon.

After the zombie pig, the skelepigs were starting to get replaced with something just as bizarre. Instead of lumbering, yet relatively sturdy, undead pigs, we were faced with clucking chickens, completely impossible abominations constructed from bones, beaks and feathers. It was as if somebody had taken a rough idea of what a chicken skeleton might look like, fluffed up some of the parts with feathers, put a beak at the front and launched them at their enemies. However, where the skelepigs had been designed to be sturdy, solid and hit like a truck, the clucking chickens were pretty much the opposite. They had no durability to speak of, to the point that a single strike with my Frozen Shuttle was enough to destroy one, but what they lacked in defence, they made up in speed and power.

The first of these things almost took Lia’s head off, it was only a combination of luck and vigilance that allowed me to shove her out of the way in time, causing the thing to crash into the wall and crumble from the impact. At that point, I decided to conjure up a simple shield made of Ice, nothing truly sturdy or fancy, but it was good enough to act as a buffer, allowing me to let them crash into the shield. They were their own worst enemies, or maybe they were simply designed as suicide attackers, their purpose only to strike an enemy and demolish them with a single, brutal attack.

Whatever their purpose, their addition amusingly allowed us to dispatch our enemies quicker than before. Where before we had to demolish half a dozen skelepigs, all of which were quite sturdy for their level, not Silva and Lia could take care of two or three of them, while I was playing catcher against the clucking chicken, letting them break against my shield or skewer them on my Frozen Shuttle. In those fights, I purely focused on my Ice Magic, and it showed, especially when the orange goop in the walls started to be turned into traps, suddenly launching globs of goop at us. Given how unhealthy it looked, and the strange, chaotic magic I could feel from it, I wasn’t about to let it hit any of us. That lead to my shield occasionally breaking, or rather being eaten by the goop, and I had to repair it, but things worked out. Somehow.

By the time we made it to the next boss, I managed to get another point in Ice Magic, bringing it to twenty-six, and one additional point in Blood Rune Mastery, bringing it to twenty-two, from having to occasionally heal up my allies. In addition, the constant combat gave a lot of EXP, thanks to the Dungeon Traveller Buff and the growing level and number of our enemies, allowing me to steadily progress towards level thirty. I hadn’t reached it yet, but I would soon get there.

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But before I could, we were faced with the second boss of the Dark Slaughterhouse, a monster that took the insanity that were the clucking chicken and pushed it to eleven. Or maybe twelve.

The Chicken Shredder was a bizarre construct made of metal, bone and insanity. It looked like a washing machine had a baby with a kitchen mixer and exploded afterwards, turning into a constantly spinning, whirling and twisting abomination that randomly launched pieces of bone, chicken and feathers at us. The room it was in luckily had quite a bit of cover, broken chicken cages lying around everywhere, allowing us to hide from the madness. Sadly, the Chicken Shredder also produced a steady supply of baby clucking chickens that tried to crash into us and take our heads off with their suicide attacks.

When faced with the onslaught none of us really knew how to tackle our foe. If Lia or Silva even considered getting close to it, the volume of attacks increased tremendously, forcing them back into cover, while I wasn’t sure my Ice Attacks would cause any damage at all. It looked far too chaotic and random for precision attacks to work, I simply didn’t know what to go for.

So, when faced with a foe you don’t know where to hit, try hitting it everywhere at once. Instead of moving up to it and risking injury, Lia and Silva were tasked with stopping the baby clucking chicken from disturbing me, while I focused on taking our foe down. While it lacked the innate moisture I had used against the zombie pig, I only had to add the moisture myself, by combining Water and Ice Runes in an attempt to first drench the thing, trying to get as much water into the more delicate parts of the insanity we were faced with, before freezing the water.

Compared to the easy victory against the zombie pig, the Chicken Shredder took a lot of time. However, with each orb of water I launched into the moving parts of it before channelling a surge of Ice Magic through my lingering connection to my Astral Power, I could feel the thing slow down a little, could hear the more delicate parts deep within the construct crack. Minute after minute passed with me moving from cover to cover, constantly guarded by my two companions, while I repeated my spells, slowly but surely whittling the thing down.

Finally, after what felt like hours of combat, but realistically had just been ten minutes, the thing’s mechanism finally broke and it started to spin uncontrollably. We couldn’t do anything but duck behind cover and wait, while the construct completely came apart, shattering into countless pieces.

While the pieces were still raining down all around us, some crashing against the cover we had hid behind, I glanced into my notifications, grinning widely when I read through them. More skill levels, again in my Water Magic, Water Rune Mastery and Ice Magic. Water Magic gained one level, bringing it to eight, Water Rune Mastery got two, bringing it to nine and Ice Magic got one, bringing it to twenty-seven. Sadly, it hadn’t been enough to push me to thirty, but I was almost there. A few more of the groups that had been attacking us relentlessly, and I’d get there.

But before that, I carefully watched how the various parts of the Chicken Shredder disappeared back into the environment, trying to trace and understand what might be going on here. Sadly, even with my Magical Sight, the mechanisms involved were simply too advanced for me, I didn’t even know where to begin deciphering them. I tried to commit as much as possible to memory, but I had no idea if I’d be able to decipher things at any point in the future.

“This is so weird,” Lia muttered, studying the items the boss had left behind. Moving forward, I went to have a look myself and had to agree with her. The items the boss had left behind were almost as weird as the boss itself had been, to the point that I began to wonder what sort of mind, or intelligence, had come up with them. This couldn’t just be random, so someone, or something, had to have designed it, but what sort of being would design a mechanical monstrosity that launched undead baby chicken at its foes? Just bizarre.