Further away and past the fire columns he could see a monster den. Well it was only a fissure in the wall, but it positively hosted monsters. A large red bear was laying by the entrance, enjoying the stray fire tongues coming from the cracks in the ground. Both its eyes and fur emitted a gentle red glow. Now and then, in between its clawed paws fire would spring forth and then die abruptly.

“Ignibear, yes-yes, very dangerous. Will cook alive.”

“I can see that, but will it have Fire Spirit Stones in that den?”

“Is likely.” The kobold looked at the ingibear and shuddered. “This won’t be easy.”

He knew that.

“I think we should set a camp and rest before we tackle the bear.”

The Drow nodded in approval, after all, everyone was tired from the long trip. The spiders gladly ate the fruit but the drow had other ideas. They kept some of the juicier centipede monster carcasses exactly for this reason. The preparation method was interesting. The Drow made small cuts near the head and then pulled it off together with the insect guts, then some other undesirable parts were scraped by hand. With that done they stuffed the long carcass with mushrooms, cave herbs and cuts of TomGrape, and then left it to steam on one of the fissures spewing fire. The centipede didn’t look tasty at all, well not to him, but Drow had experience eating insects in the forest.

The centipede's insides began sizzling emitting a sweet aroma of herbs and fruit. The smell pleasantly tickled his nose and he changed his mind about the insect meat just a tiny bit.

“Is it any good?” He asked curious.

The drow shrugged. “As good as it gets.”

He was of course, making a small batch of food on his own. Once he used Material Harvest on mole monsters, they dropped some fat cuts of meat. He was cutting it now. But it was strange that Drow preferred centipedes to moles. Incidentally, the centipede monster dropped Paralytic Venom so he never thought their flesh could be eaten; but hey, look at the Drow greedily slurping their dinner up.

The Drow had cut the cooked centipede in half and then further divided the carapace segments between each other. While the shell was hard and inedible, it was surrounded by white juicy meat; it had soaked all the flavours of fruit and cave herbs. While they were eating he could hear the noise best described as food orgasm. It can’t be that good, can it?

“Can I have some?” He finally asked.

“Sure.” The scout handed him a piece.

He slurped the meet, cautiously at first, but then he couldn’t stop and let himself indulge. And before he could even notice it was all gone, only a hard insect shell remained. He didn’t even want to eat the mole meat anymore.

“Who knew bugs can taste this great.”

The drow smiled. “There is more.”

Indeed, another centipede was cooking on the fire.

“Danger!” The Kobold Leader shouted.

Everyone jumped in alarm grabbing their weapons. He looked around, they weren’t under attack yet, but the ignibear was sprinting towards them. He made sure to make camp far from its den so he couldn't help but wonder what had upset the monster.

“Let’s form a defensive line. We’ll try to break its charge.”

The spearmen reluctantly walked forward and positioned their spears.

“It’s alright, I and my spiders will support you.” And they had archers right behind.

The ignibear was charging head-on, but then it turned and circled around the group. Apparently, its goal was never them but the juicy insect cooking on the fire; it snatched it and ran away.

“No! After go after it!” The Kobold Leader shouted and for some reason, the spearmen began chasing the bear.

“Shush! Don’t listen to him!” He wanted to slap the Kobold, but the drow had already broken the formation.

The archers fired their arrows at the monster, some simply bounced off but there were a few which got stuck. Likely affected by Torpor it slowed down.

“Wait, don’t attack.” He urged the spearmen to come back. “The archers can get it, you don’t have to chase it.”

The ignibear unable to make a quick escape changed its priorities. It dropped the food it was holding in its maw and began charging towards the drow.

The Kobold Leader, despite all the danger, ran to get the food. He was either very brave or very stupid. Luckily the ignibear didn’t care about the kobold and after receiving another volley of arrows it crashed into the spearmen. It used its size and weight to try and overwhelm the Drow, but there were spiders to give a spidery hand and counter it.

The ignibear didn’t give up easily. It was swiping with its claws, each swipe brought a wave of flames. Luckily the Drow were well protected and were able to block the attack with shields and ignore the fires. The spiders didn’t stand idly either, the crystal and stone spiders were hitting and pummeling the monster trying to distract it.

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The bear was surrounded, it was taking a lot of punishment but refused to go down; it just had a lot of resilience. Not only that, but the spears and arrows did little damage to it. It was the fight of attrition, and he was lucky to have the advantage of numbers.

He used Shadow Walk to disengage away from the bear. Then he circled to ambush it from the back. He dropped the spell and struck the bear from behind activating Assassin Strike. Unlike other times the spear sunk deep into the flesh and the bear roared spitting fire from its mouth to bask the Drow in a storm of flames, completely engulfing them.

He didn’t know the ignibear could do that; likely it was the last resort attack. The drow panicked for a moment but the large chest scales glowed purple indicating that the Fire Absorb perk was activated, some of the shields even shot the fiery torrent back at the ignibear.

Well, he and the spiders were right behind the ignibear taking the reflected attack together with the monster. That’s why everyone had Fire Resistance Robes.

The monster collapsed and the fiery flame in its eyes disappeared. [Fighting +1000exp]. Compared to moles and centipedes this was 10x more but probably x20 harder to defeat. [Soul Steal] The perk activated on its own, eating at the monster.

“Oh no you don’t.” He didn’t want to be left with the hollowed and worthless husk. “Harvest Material.” [IgniBear Pelt] x1: it went into his inventory.

The corpse was gone leaving only purple motes of light flying in it’s place. The Drow cheered and the spiders chirped.

“This didn’t go as planned but well done!” He congratulated.

“Yes, *Slurp*, Yes.” The Kobold Leader was devouring the retrieved centipede.

“How much can you eat?” He had to ask.

“I’m a growing kobold.” He took another bite.

He looked at the fissure, hoping that it didn’t house more ignibears. “Let’s go and investigate. Carefully.”

They had to step carefully to avoid the irregular jets of fire. Even if it hit, it didn’t do damage, but it was mighty unpleasant; just too hot. Once he reached the fissure he had to step back. A large shadow emerged from it and he grasped for his spear instinctively. The shadow coalesced to form the vague shape of a spider.

“A spider?”

The shadowy mandibles opened and spewed a bunch of Fire Spirit Stones.

“I. Gathered. It. After. The Bear. Was. Gone.” It explained helpfully.

“Wait, you are one of mine?” For a moment he thought it was just another monster. “But I don’t remember you.”

“Darkness Spider.” It chirped its name.

Yes, it was a spider made out of darkness… it looked weird, more ghost than a physical being.

“Oh! The fifth one! Why didn’t you introduce yourself earlier?”

“I’m. A. Criminal. Bring. Shame. To. Spiders.” It chirped sadly.

“Criminal?” He didn't understand. “Why?”

“Impossible. To Wear. Clothes.” The vague form turned back into a cloud of shadows.

He tried to pat the spider to calm it down, but his hand went right through. “I see. This is about one of my commandments that everyone must wear clothes. Don’t worry about it, we can make exceptions.”

The darkness returned to the vague shape of the spider. “No!” It chirped in protest. “No. Exceptions.”

“Nonsense. You did no wrong.”

“I Set. Bad. Example. Other. Spiders. Will. Learn. Bad. Things.” It chirped. “Will. Remain. In. Caves. Hide. In. Shadows.”

“He just doesn’t like light.” The kobold leader looked at Glowing Spider, “He said, it hurts him. Kobolds understand, yes-yes ,we too don’t like big bright ball of fire in the ceiling.”

“The Sun? You don’t like it?”

“Yes. Also. To. Be. Seen.”

“Oh, I see…” This was just one very shy spider. “You can live here in the caves if you like. And you are no criminal don’t let anyone bully you for your inability to wear clothes.”

“Understood.”

“Is there anything else of value in this den?”

“No. Just. Bones.” The Darkness Spider turned into a shadow and disappeared into a dim corner.

“Well then.” He gathered all twelve spirit stones. “Thanks for that. Let’s look for more.”

And for that, they needed to go deeper into the caverns.

…

The Fire Spirit Stones were not always guarded by monsters. They managed to find a few in shallow pools of liquid fire. By the way, he tried to harvest it but the perk failed; he just couldn’t harvest fire even in its magical liquid state. Some stones were lodged in the walls and they had to extract them. Also, there was this interesting monster, it was just a twisting whirlpool of fire, likely a fire elemental.

The elemental knew how to spit balls of fire, but the suits and shields were able to weather the damage with no problem. However, hurting the elemental proved to be difficult. The arrows just burned, and the spear strikes went right through it without dealing damage; it was a quick and agile monster. However, once he managed to land a hit with Devouring Spear, it was all he needed to kill it. It just exploded into fire and then dropped a single spirit stone; the 250 exp wasn't bad either. In the end, they settled for hunting these minor fire elementals; it was the quickest way to obtain the spirit stones.

In the end, they killed two more ignibears, a whole lot of fire elementals and gathered stray stones whenever they could find them. The result was a whopping 250 fire stones.

“I reckon this is enough.”

The Drow were quick to agree, so they began heading back. The entrance to the dark tunnels was right in their sight, however, there was a small problem.

“Emberdread!” The kobold shouted pointing a shaky finger at the creature.

The creature was vaguely humanoid but wreathed in an unending fire. The fiery form was spewing stray tongues of fire lighting the surrounding area in intense red light. It seemed to control the liquid flame composing its body and was able to form it into whatever shape it desired.

“Run! Run!” The kobold ran in a random direction flailing his hands “Ehh! Help!” He lost his cool completely.

A cloud of darkness emerged from the wall and surrounded the kobold, and then the little guy just turned into a shadow flying right to the tunnel exit.

“I wonder if we can do the same. Dark Shroud.” He buffed the Mushroom Spider first and then the Glowing Spider; the two turned into blobs of darkness and slithered past the creature and right into the tunnel. Then he began buffing the Drow, however, the Emberdread had other ideas.

“InTruDers!” It spat fire with each syllabus. Then a massive fireball formed in its hand. “ExPloSion.”

As the name implied, everything around the creature exploded knocking Drow and spiders alike. The ground itself was set ablaze, everywhere was just flames.

“I’ll Eat Your Souls. ConTrol FlaMe.” It spat the flames with each word. “Like You Did My ChilDren!” It roared and the ground burned even more intensely.

He tried to buff the Drow again but the spell just failed, standing in fire might have had something to do with it.

“I don’t think we can run…” He put on the Aura of Courage. “Let’s fight for our lives!” He charged the creature urging the drow and the spiders to do the same.