The group of nervous men and teens, all advanced forward slowly in a timid fashion. Many bald heads swiveling around, looking for the first sign of danger. They all knew the monsters were out there, just beyond their visual reach, lurking in the darkness. Even if they were not able to hear them, most could certainly feel the hungry eyes of the monsters following them. The hungry eyes of the dungeon.

A sudden skittering sound to the right made most of the bald men’s heads swing in that direction. One party member even recoiled, taking a step or two back.

“Get back in formation.” Shivas growled in a low but intense voice. The boy quickly returned to his former position in the formation.

The formation was little more than a mostly complete circle a little distance from and around Shivas. A pretty standard formation for a slave delver party, or so they had been taught. They were never taught exactly why this was the most common formation for such a party, but Andaris did know a little bit about dungeon monsters, so he could guess.

Monsters had what was called aggro, in that they typically attacked whatever had the most aggro accumulated with them, well it was apparently a bit more complicated than that, but that was the gist of it. That being said, if a dungeon monster did not yet have any aggro and it still decided to attack, it would generally attack whatever was closest to it. This formation should generally ensure that the slave warden is not the closest thing to said monster.

Another skittering sound in the darkness.

Andaris could suddenly smell the sharp smell of urine in the air. Looking down, he noticed that one of the younger men had pissed himself. It wasn’t very reassuring that his fellow party members were caving like this before any fighting had even begun. They all went through the same ‘training’ he had after all. Their nerves should have been tempered a bit better than this, especially, when said training, involved mostly dodging sharp objects and getting hellishly painful lashes on top of the cuts, whenever you failed.

Another skittering sound, more than one this time.

It was apparently too much, and the damn broke. The boy that had pissed himself bolted, making straight for the exit they had all come in by.

“Oh no you don’t!” Shivas roared while unfurling his whip in the air. A sharp tug with a slight swing in it and the tentacle of pain reached out and wrapped itself around the boy's throat. Shivas yanked sharply on the whip and the boy was lifted off his feet and flew through the air, to land right back at Shivas’ feet.

Shivas then drew his sword surprisingly smoothly with his left hand and drove it straight into the downed boy’s heart. With a twist of the blade before retracting it, he snuffed out the slaves' life.

With blood still dripping off the length of his sword, Shivas turned to the rest of the slaves’, a wicked grin on his face. “Anyone else want to run?”

There was of course no answer, only the sound of hungry monsters waiting to pounce on them.

Shivas then kicked the boys body halfway towards the edge of their light radius in one swift motion. Despite the man not being of a very tall or broad stature, more rotund than anything else really, he still packed an insane amount of power.

With the enticing, bleeding, freshly killed body just laying within reach, the monsters could no longer resist. Several jet black creatures pounced the boys corpse and began to devour it gleefully.

“Now let’s get a look at you…” Shivas appraised the creatures thoughtfully. Andaris, despite the cruel treatment and loss of his fellow party member, also chose not to waste this valuable opportunity.

He mentally thanked and apologised to the boy for his sacrifice and gulped down his own gut churning in on itself at the sight and sound of a human being ripped apart and eaten. Instead he tried to study the creatures they would soon be fighting.

They were vicious looking jet black creatures, with a sheen to their carapace. Bulbous heads atop flat lithe bodies containing far more teeth than he was comfortable with. Two mandibles mounted to either side of their toothy grins and two small grey bulbous eyes more towards the sides of their heads than in front. The creature also had six spindly legs that it traveled around on, all of which appear to be ending in dagger like blades. It wasn’t that big, barely the size of a smallish dog, but looked rather fearsome and dangerous all the same.

One or two of the monsters were satisfied with their meal, and instead began to stalk forward. Several of the men took a step back in fear and were immediately rewarded by the sound of a whip cracking, halting them in their tracks. Their unknown fear of facing the monsters being weighed against their very known fear of the mind breaking pain that whip was able to produce.

Despite not being on that side of the circle, Andaris also crept towards what was about to become the frontlines. This did not escape the warden’s notice, but he clearly did not mind. Andaris, although sweating in fear of facing these hungry predators, was all the same eager, to fight, eager to prove himself in the world of the dungeon.

There was a brief moment of stillness, the calm before the storm, where monsters eyed the humans and the humans stood ready, their bone shivs held out in the direction of the monsters, shaking in their sweat drenched hands.

And then the storm hit.

The two leading monsters surged forward, with the ones that were still devouring the boy, also suddenly breaking off and charging.

One of the boys immediately broke rank and turned to flee. He did not even make it one step before receiving a boot to the face, hurtling him backwards into the incoming monsters path. Shivas could always tell which ones would flee.

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The boy landed right in front of the two lead monsters and they wasted no time pouncing upon him. The boy screamed as they bit at his face and pincushioned his body with their sharp bladed limbs. His life was over, painfully, but quickly.

Andaris had wasted no time and surged forward, driving his shiv straight into one of the monsters, just as they had been ‘finishing up’. Apparently he was not the only one to swing into action, Antonio had also lunged at the other monster devouring the boy.

Andaris’ shiv however glanced off the monster’s hardened carapace, the primitive and blunt weapon, not being enough to penetrate the monster’s defenses. Antonio, on the other hand scored a lucky blow, he managed to get his blade between the monster’s carapace plates of its head and its body, driving deep. The creature stopped moving immediately.

The monster Andaris had failed to kill however, turned its attention fully to him. Before he could pull away, he received a nasty gash on his leg from the monster doing a quick side-swiping motion from one of its bladed limbs. It then stalked closer to Andaris as he took a step back for some room.

The monster raised up on its hind four legs, lifting the front two up in a challenge and gave a daring hiss. Then it lunged forward and tried to stab into Andaris right foot, which he quickly pulled out of the way of the strike. The monster took another step forward and tried the same approach with his left, also just barely missing.

While dodging the monsters frenzied strikes, he was also trying to be carefull, not to get seperated from the group, he had heard stories about how delvers died due to monsters herding them away from the group.

In his peripheral vision that he could barely spare, he noticed something, seemingly one of the monsters, fly straight at one of the slaves and latch on to him, no doubt about to poke him full of bloody holes.

He forcibly spared some of his peripheral vision for stuff like this, despite his need to fight the monster before him, since he did not wish to get surprised by another monster while he fought. And fight he did. Another two of his retaliation strikes had failed to do anything to the monster other than push its aggro.

The monster went in for a quick double strike, one aimed at each of his feet, this sudden change in tactics threw Andaris off guard and off balance as he dodged both attacks in rapid succession. This was getting him nowhere, so instead of stumble backwards and try and regain his balance before the next strike, Andaris instead fell forward, intentionally.

He brought his knee down right on top of the monster's body and pinned it to the ground. The monster’s rather flat body made this surprisingly easy to do. It helplessly shuffled its legs around, along its sides, but failed to reach him, the limbs not having enough range of motion. The monster also failed to try and get out from underneath him, clearly not having the power needed to do so.

So they might be fast, dangerous and have good defenses, but they are not very strong. Andaris thought to himself as he slid his blade between the carapace plates and into the monster's neck. It went in deep and easily and the monster stopped struggling immediately.

Andaris got up and sighed in relief, looks like they won’t be all that hard to kill. We can do this! He thought to himself eagerly. Looking up, this hope was completely smashed. There were already several dead slave bodies scattered about, each usually in a pool of their own blood. There were only a couple of dead monsters in exchange, and quite a few more to kill.

Andaris was momentarily startled by how fast his peers were dropping, it was like they had forgotten all of their training. What he failed to realise was that he himself had just suffered such a similar lapse.

He caught it far too late. Out the corner of his eye, he could see a form of black launching through the air, limbs outstretched and aiming straight for his neck. Even though Andaris registered the creature pulling that weird jump move on him, he knew he would not be able to react in time.

Preparing himself for the worst, he was surprised when the spot of black, was interrupted by a larger spot of brown crashing into it and hurling the monster off course. Andaris was surprised to see Antonio attached to the end of that rock, he had literally bashed the creature out of the air with it.

Antonio then smiled at him, shoving the rock into Andaris’ hands. “Fuck shiv. Use rock. They don’t like rocks.” His short punctuated instructions were left hanging as he turned around to find another suitable anti-monster rock for himself. Andaris could not help but smile at the young man's antics.

He himself turned and aimed to assist his nearest party member that was desperately trying to fend off one of the monsters with his shiv. Andaris brought his rock down hard, but the monster spotted it in time and managed to jump to the side to avoid the collision. Before Andaris could pull back, it struck out and left a nasty gash on his hand.

“Shit!”, Andaris hissed, reflexively dropping his rock in the process. The monster saw this as an opportunity and immediately charged him. Panicked, Andaris lashed out with his foot and managed to kick the monster away a bit, but received another painful gash on his foot in exchange.

The monster once more charged him as Andaris picked up his rock. As it reared up to strike, a bone shiv glanced off its back. The other boy had tried to interrupt the monster’s attack. The monster in turn slanted towards the boy and hissed threateningly.

It did not however get to finish the hiss. The distraction cost it its life as a rock came crashing down on its back with a sickening crunch sound.

He’s right, they don’t like rocks!

The two men shared a nod and set to work together on the next nearest monster.

Several monsters later and many more cuts and bruises and the last of the batch of monsters finally fell.

“Fucking hells! You useless turds!” Shivas was apparently furious.

“How the fuck did nine of you useless cunts manage to die!” He lashed out with his whip at one of the boys, who immediately doubled over in pain.

Shivas then continued to spray spittle all over as he ranted on: “What the fuck am I supposed to tell Corvas? We lost nine slaves straight after arriving on the second floor? The second fucking floor!”

Shivas kicked at one of the nearby rocks in frustration, sending it careening into the darkness. Still not satisfied he put a boot to the head of the downed boy that was busy trying to get back up and sent him tumbling across the ground.

“FUCK!!!” He continued to scream to no one in particular.

After a deep breath he addressed the group coldly, “Keep watch you little shits. I need to record all this.”

Shivas then proceeded to write down on a parchment a number of things, likely information about the monster we encountered and their abilities. He also used a separate parchment to begin mapping the floor.

After having recorded everything he could, he addressed the remaining eight men, “Alright you sorry lot, get back in formation. A little closer and a lot loser this time, there aren’t many of you left for it. We move on!”

Andaris could see a number of the men practically tear up in horror, that they would be continuing with this nightmare. Others simply hung their heads in misery, accepting the likely painful deaths awaiting them. Even Antonio seemed to let out a sigh.