“What the hell…” muttered Alissa when she saw the creatures that lurked in the distance.

The party had entered the third and last cavern of the dungeon complex, and to their surprise, the first hour or so of their passage was uneventful, with not even a single monster disturbing their travels. That calm was only broken when they saw the first of the monsters that populated the third cavern from a distance, which made their chaperones call for a halt.

By that point, the three of them had already reached their eighteenth level in the second tier, while the rest of the party was around their mid third tiers, with the experience from the third cavern likely enough to push the [Heroes] into the third tiers and the rest towards the late stages of the same tier. Even so, the creatures they saw from a distance made them all feel a sense of danger from it, one that exceeded even the boss they fought at the end of the previous caverns.

From the distance, they saw a small pack of creatures, which everyone knew was none other than colonies of the same thread-like creatures they have faced so far, though these ones looked very different. Where the previous creatures had chunks or slabs of stone or wood attached to their bodies like a skin or armor plating, the ones they saw before them aped the living form in a much closer way.

The segments of stones that covered their bodies were smooth, as if each piece was precisely sculpted into that form, and resembled the exoskeletons of some insects. As for their shapes, the creatures they saw resembled a large scorpion that had a human upper torso growing out from where its “head” was supposed to be.

Each of them also wore artifact weapons and armor to boot.

If the monsters in the second cavern had that uncanny feel about them, the ones in the third cavern could have very easily passed for some sort of chimeras that just happened to have stone exoskeletons, so detailed and natural-looking was their form. Together with that natural-looking form was also an elegance and grace of movement that the creatures in the previous two caverns – other than the bosses of the second cavern – lacked.

As such, the party did not hold back and buffed themselves before they engaged the small pack of six creatures.

It proved to be a wise decision, because they almost immediately discovered that the creatures in the third cavern were each individually stronger than the boss monsters in the previous cavern. The party had to give their all before they finally managed to defeat the creatures, one at a time. Even then it took them a noticeable amount of effort to finally clinch the victory.

Joshua dropped one of the creatures with a full-power blast of magic, while the other five had to be dismembered one at a time by the rest of the group. Like the creatures in the second cavern these ones also had cores acting as brains somewhere in their bodies, and despite their relatively small size, were extremely dense and tight-knit to the point that it was difficult for a blade to cut through their “flesh”.

In fact, the fighting left the party with more injuries compared to the bosses they fought in the second cavern, and they had to rest while Leda healed the injured first. The rest was needed regardless, as the party realized all too well that they definitely needed their buffs active in order to be able to fight the creatures of the third cavern, in case the rest were like the ones they ran into just now.

The next pack of creatures they ran into was surprisingly quite different from the first group. Where the first group had lower bodies that aped scorpions, the second pack had no stone “skin” and instead had many of the thread-like creatures swaying freely as if they were its fur. Its lower body resembled a large tiger, with sharp blades of stone serving as its “claws”.

Their upper bodies still resembled a human’s – with a rather eerie face that seemed to hover between hinting at facial features and being featureless – and were clad in artifact armor with artifact weapons in hand, however. There were only five of the creatures in the pack, and the party engaged with full force right away, drawing from their experience in the first battle.

Despite their preparations, they were still caught off guard when the creatures proved to be quite different from the previous ones.

Where the previous scorpionoids were rather slow and relied on their solid stone shells to take hits, these tiger-like ones were fast and far more agile, and their speed almost caught Moira fatally off guard, though fortunately the girl reacted fast enough to avoid the blade that went for her throat. Even so, a bloody wound was still opened up across her throat, though it was fortunately shallow enough to not hit anything vital.

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That early scare gave enough warning for the rest to guard themselves more closely, and nobody else was taken by surprise, though Ethan and Bronwen had to cover Maribel and Silvia, respectively, from sudden assaults by the monsters. The fighting was fiercer and more brutal, as against the agile monsters, the party quickly found that offense was the best defense.

Compared to the previous fight, while there was one less monster, the fighting was more ferocious and brutal overall, and by the end of the fight half of the party had to be tended to by Leda as they were injured quite badly in the process. While the experience they received was high, the difficulty also increased considerably.

As such, the party chose to rest early that day, as some of them were still weakened by the aftereffects of the healing magic anyway. Sir Inolet and Magus Drummond actually praised them for seeing the wisdom of taking their time and resting more instead of forcefully charging ahead regardless of the situation they were in.

“To keep plowing ahead might be needed at times, when the situation is critical and the fate of many were at stake,” said Sir Inolet as they sat around the campfire and supped on their simple fare for dinner. “This situation is not one of those, however. While we do need your party capable of holding your own in the frontlines as soon as possible, a couple days more of waiting wouldn’t hurt, whereas losing even one of you would have been an unacceptable loss at this stage, considering you’re just supposed to be leveling here.”

“We had some pretty close calls today,” noted Nadine with a nod of her head. Her worry had been quite personal, as one of the ones who had such a close call was Maribel, who was nearly disemboweled when she took a hit meant for Nadine herself. It was fortunate that Leda was skilled enough to heal such injuries “I can see why this dungeon is hated, even if it dropped artifacts. What sort of parties do they usually send here?”

“Around fifty or more third tiers, at the very least,” replied Magus Drummond, "and even then they often come out with casualties that cannot be called light. There had even been several records of failed expeditions, despite how seriously they took this dungeon. The boss at the end of this cavern was the cause for most of those.”

“Oh joy,” noted Benedictus dryly. The young temple guard had always had some sort of personal vendetta against monsters after he lost his older brother to one in the first delve made by the [Heroes], but even he felt somewhat dispirited when he heard what Magus Drummond said. Given how most dungeons were pretty well documented at the present age, a failed expedition generally meant only one thing.

That either the dungeon itself or its boss monster had enough variance in power that it was difficult to pinpoint a good amount of power needed to take them on. Given what they had experienced of the dungeon so far, it was almost certain that in this dungeon’s case, it was the boss that held that variance, and they would have to tackle said boss in a few days themselves.

“First we face beastial forms, then humanoid forms, and now we have to deal with chimeras that combine both,” said Alissa with a shake of his head. “It’s almost like this place is some long abandoned mad scientist’s lab and we’re cleaning up the remnants of their crazy experiment, in a way.”

“Pretty apt analogy, though I’d put it closer to some deranged god playing a bioweapon factory instead,” replied Ethan. “I just hope that whatever boss we end up having to deal with, all of us will be able to walk out of it alive.”

“One can always hope.”

The next day, the party continued their journey. Like before, the third cavern was rather sparsely populated, and it was not until several hours into the journey that they ran into another pack of chimeric creatures, these ones with equine lower bodies. The party was prepared for the encounter and went at it with everything they got, but even then Osmond ended up with a bad injury after one of the monsters managed to break through their frontlines.

After some rest, they continued onward and ran into creatures that had lower bodies that look like serpents next, with four-armed humanoid upper bodies protruding from where the snake’s head should have been. There were only three of the creatures so Alissa and Ethan attempted a pre-emptive strike from her shadow realm and succeeded in injuring one, but both of them were also quite badly injured as a result.

Because of that, the party took another early break for the night as they nursed their wounds and rested their weary bodies. They noticed that on a general trend, there seemed to be fewer and fewer monsters to each pack they faced deeper into the cavern, yet at the same time, the difficulty kept increasing as each of the monsters got notably stronger, with enough variance that it was difficult to know what to expect.

The scorpion-like creatures they first met were defensive in nature, whereas the tiger-like ones were agile. The ones with equine lower bodies were powerful and durable, which was what allowed one of them to break through the party’s defense lines during the battle, while the ones with the snake-like lower bodies used several forms of magic, though fortunately nothing the party couldn’t handle.

As they went deeper, the trend continued, and by the fourth day they only ran into creatures in pairs, though the difficulty in dealing with the creatures increased greatly by that point even though there were only so few of them. By then the party had already guessed that the boss that awaited them at the end of the dungeon was likely by itself.

And their guess was proven correct.

Waiting for them at the end of the third cavern was another chimeric monster that seemed to combine features from many of the others. It had a reptilian lower body on four strong legs, with scales of smoothly polished stone that covered even the humanoid part of its body as well, as well as claws and tail-spikes that looked as if they were snapped off obsidian.

The creature wore a set of fine-looking lamellar mail over its humanoid body, and had another set – one that looked like barding for a warhorse – draped over the back and sides of its reptilian lower body. It had four hands that extended from its humanoid upper body which each held an artifact. A shield in one hand, a spear in another, a hefty mace in a third, and a large greatsword in its last claw-tipped hands, because of course it had claws as well.

With a resigned sigh, the party prepared themselves for battle, knowing all too well that they had a tough fight waiting ahead of them. They cast their buffs and fell into formation, even as the monstrous creature turned towards them, appearing to look down at them with two of its arms crossed over its chest. Its posture seemed to scoff at the party for daring to face it.

A silence was held for a brief moment as the party eyed the monster, before all hell broke loose.