Staying ready this time, the forty members of the raid party were more vigilant as they continued down into the dungeon depths. The team reached their first room in the dungeon at the end of one of the long corridors. It was a dome shape seemingly perfectly smooth along the walls and meeting at the top in the rounded shape. Two doors stood at the opposite end of the room.

When the last member of the team entered the room a door shot up much faster than the entrance door moved and closed them in the room. Torches flickered as they hung on the walls of the room, bathing it in an ominous orange light. Shadows began to move along the walls of the room, taking the shapes of different creatures. Some with two legs, others with four or more. They began to stalk the outer wall around the team.

"Form up! Defensive people along the outside! Shields up and be ready for an attack!" Tom called out.

Moving immediately into action, the teams formed a circle with fighters on the outside and spellcasters in the middle. Turning as one, the shadows along the walls faced the team and then began moving up the wall toward the ceiling.

"They're going to dive the middle! Light casters prepare spells!" Derek called out.

Four members of the team began casting as they looked up to follow the movements of the beasts. Once they reached the top of the dome, the shadow creatures began to peel themselves off of the stone and take a three-dimensional shape. Some looked like wolves, others hideous warped human-shaped figures, while others still had six or even eight legs and took the forms of grotesque insects, spiders, and other unknown creatures.

One creature appeared to let go of the dome and fell toward the party. Another spider-like creature descended from a thread of pure shadow. They began to fall more rapidly toward the teams, opening mouths made of shadow to reveal sharp shadow teeth and fangs.

As they neared the group, three balls of light shot out and hit the creatures causing them to explode into the same puff of shadow ash the team had seen before. The fourth member of the team took longer to cast but put up a shining barrier of light over the center of where they were standing.

The Shadow creatures hissed and screamed, covering their faces to block the light as they continued to fall or descend. As they impacted the barrier, the monsters exploded causing repetitious firecracker sounds to ring out through the cavern.

A few of the creatures missed the barrier as they let go of the ceiling further from the center. These creatures fell on the fighters who tried to dodge the best they could. Some were tackled by the creatures landing on them and fell to the ground. Everyone began to attack the creatures and pull their comrades up from under them.

Cries and screams erupted from both shadow creatures and humans as the fight devolved into chaos. Weapons flashed out to stab, chop, smash, and cut anything that looked like a shadow. Spells began to fly out as well, striking creatures on the sides, backs, and heads as they fought to take down the creatures. The barrier was holding nicely, but the shadow creatures were wisening up to the tactic and began to rain down on them further from the center of the group to avoid the light.

Eventually, the creature limit seemed to have been reached and they stopped falling on the raid party. The fighting continued furiously as people fought to keep the ranks together and fight off the rush of monsters.

"Tom! The tattoo! Use the tattoo!" Derek called.

Tom activated his Tattoo of Life Absorption and felt the power flow into him as life was drained away from so many enemies at once. Some of the shadows began to shrink as the life was drained from them. Many of them turned toward Tom after realizing where the drain was coming from. They began to claw their way toward him in an attempt to stop the loss of life.

Others continually threw themselves into the way to stop the advance and they were stopped short by a wall of fighters hacking and slashing at them. Tom continued to fight off the monsters around him, swinging his greatsword in wide arcs and cutting through the bodies of the shadow creatures. Due to the skill refilling his stamina as well as his HP and MP, he began to swing the sword faster and with more powerful strikes in an attempt to use as much of the influx as possible.

Men and women were pulled back into the center of the groups when they were injured too badly, and the healers went to work on healing as many wounds as they could. Isaac fought like a man possessed in his armor. He struck down monster after monster as he yelled out his anger.

Kevin had found a friend in Kirsten, a female who had also taken the barbarian class and was wearing an Amazonian outfit that barely covered her as well. They were swinging axes in a rage-filled fury at just about anything that moved. They whirled their greataxes in wide arcs cutting down Shadow beasts left and right before they could even get close.

The number of beasts began to dwindle as more and more of the raid party began to gang up on any that were left in the room. Slashing and hacking at them, they continued the assault until the last Shadow creature was put down. When the shadow ash dissipated there was blood spilt on the ground and three of the team were incapacitated while two were dead.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Dammit! No wonder no one was coming back. This would have been nearly impossible for a party of eight." Kedron said.

"The dungeon does change slightly based on the size of the party," Bob interjected. "I'd imagine there weren't nearly this many monsters for that small of a party."

"Still, I was expecting to just find the boss and kick his ass," James said.

"That's a bit unreasonable for a dungeon," Bob said. "There are always other challenges first."

"It doesn't matter. We need to take a moment to rest after that. Can we heal anyone still alive?" Tom asked.

"Yes, but it will take some time," Derek said. "Resting is a good option.

"We can't rest too long or the dungeon will reset," Bob said.

"We won't be here that long. Just enough to heal and regain stamina." Tom said.

"And what do we do with the dead?" Zach asked.

"Take their gear and we will have to come back for the bodies. We can't drag them with us. It will slow us down and make us vulnerable." Derek said. "I know that sounds harsh, but we can't afford to take the risk."

Most went about sitting down to rest while they could. Some stripped the gear of the fallen and the healers continued to work on those who were injured.

"I ain't never seen shadows move like that before. Damn CIA tactics sons of bitches!" Clay said.

"At least the majority of us made it through okay," Seth said sitting next to him.

"True. Gonna take more than the dark to kill me off." Clay replied.

"Anyone else notice the doors didn't open?" Isaac called out.

Sure enough, none of the doors, even the one leading them into the room were open. Several people moved to the doors leading further into the rooms and tried to open them, but they didn't budge.

"So, it's likely some kind of puzzle to get out of here?" Tom asked.

"Likely," Bob said. "Just have to figure out what kind and solve it."

"But there's nothing in here? The walls are even nearly smooth." Chris said.

"There are always clues," Bob said. "Just have to find them."

"Alright, we need to fan out and see if we can find anything at all. Anyone with the rogue class, start using any abilities you have to find if there is something hidden we've missed." Tom called out.

Everyone began to move around the room to see if they could locate a switch or lever or anything that might give them a hint as to what they needed to do to open the doors. Some felt along the walls, others scoured the floors, and a few looked up at the ceiling for a clue.

After about thirty minutes of searching someone called out from a wall near one of the two doors. There was a piece of the wall that was slightly different from the rest. Jay went over to investigate. He used a skill on it and was able to tell something was behind it. He smashed the wall to remove the smooth outer layer to find a small door that he could open. Inside was a long compartment and at the back was a button. Reaching his arm in almost up to his shoulder he was able to press the button.

Two massive opening doors on either side of the assumed exit doors began to slide apart, breaking the plaster on the walls as they moved. Once the doors had opened all the way two huge statues of a beast shaped like a sphere with a mouth across the entire middle open wide to show its teeth began to move forward on tracks from each door until they sat at the entrance of the doors that had opened.

A trap door in the floor between the still-closed exits opened and a pedestal rose from the opening. On the pedestal was a stone table with words engraved into it. Derek moved to read what was on the tablet.

"Beware the devourer who feeds on all. Destroyer of worlds it answers the call. To these great gods must you leave a sacrifice. Only that which is given freely will completely suffice. The life of your own must you freely give. In hopes it won't find you and that you may live." Derek read.

"Is it saying we have to sacrifice someone to it?" James asked.

"No, that doesn't sound right," Austin said. "It says you must freely give. So something related to life that someone would freely give might be blood."

As Austin said this, two bowls moved forward from within the mouth of the beasts. They came to rest at the edge of its jaws near its teeth.

"Uh huh....so we need to bleed someone to get out. Nice." James said.

"If it's the only way, I'll do it," Tom said.

"I will as well," Zach said. "Just have the healers on standby for us."

They both walked up to the bowls and Zach called for someone from his team to join him. A woman by the name of Jane came to join him. Tom being dark aligned didn't call for anyone as he would need to heal himself.

"So, blood brother style?" Tom said pulling out a knife and looking over at Zach.

"What? No, don't be daft. Jane here has some medical supplies. She has an IV drip we can insert into our arms to drain the blood easily. Were you really going to cut yourself? That would be terrible." Zach said.

"Well, I was. Until you made it sound like a stupid idea." Tom said.

"That's because it is a stupid fucking idea shit for brains. It would be super painful." Zach said.

"How was I supposed to know you had medical equipment for bloodletting?" Tom asked.

"You could have asked someone if they had any ideas besides splitting yourself open and hoping for the best," Zach said.

"...Touche salesman," Tom said. "Alright, let's do this then."

Jane moved to help Zach first in setting up a blood drain that began to drip into the first bowl. She moved then to Tom and helped him as well. Blood drained into the bowls until they reached about the halfway mark. When they reached this point the level that they were sitting on tilted forward and with a click, they released a mechanism that opened both of the exit doors. Jane then helped both men stop the bleeding. Tom healed himself and sat down, beginning to feel slightly woozy from the blood loss.

After they had regained themselves from the healing, the parties looked at the two doorways.

"Now what?" James asked.

"Send men down both tunnels. We need to see what is ahead of us. Jay, you take the left. Send another scout down the right." Derek said.

Nodding, Jay headed off down the left tunnel while another man named Mike went down the right.