In the next room stood the biggest Metal Devourer Will had so far seen. It was twice as large as the Power Metal Devourer, yet still somehow just as slick looking as the Speed Metal Devourer.

Just like every other Metal Devourer, as soon as Will entered the room the monster started sniffing at the air, and almost immediately turned towards him and charged.

It was fast. Not as fast as the Speed Metal Devourer, but still fast enough that Will would have had trouble dodging it.

Not that the wombat got the chance. Each step the monster took was heavier than it should have been, shaking the earth when it fell. And heavy as they were, the steps came fast enough that Will was constantly staggered, barely able to keep on his feet.

And when the thing hit, it hit like a freight train. Will was thrown all the way across the room, hitting the wall with crashing force.

Before Will could even begin to pill himself away from the wall, the monstrous insect brought its antennae down, and grasped them with its front legs. As the Metal Devourer pulled back on the antennae, Will could see metal strings stretched across them.

The right antenna had four different strings, and when the monster started pulling on them, large arrows appeared, one attached to each string. The arrows appeared transparent at first, but slowly solidified.

The left antenna had more strings, but each one seemed thinner. When pulled, smaller arrows manifested on them. These arrows, while significantly smaller, seemed to solidify much faster. Will just about managed to count six of them, when the creature released the strings.

With a strangely melodic twanging sound, the arrows were launched at Will, who managed, barely, to roll out of the way.

…Just in time for a much lower twanging sound to herald the four heavier arrows being fired as well. This time, the wombat couldn’t recover in time to dodge again, and three of the arrows struck his armored flank.

The last one, naturally, had to hit his unarmored wom-butt.

Still trying to shake off the effects of the barrage of different attacks, Will ordered his Light Beast to attack. At the same time, he had to run again, because another cluster of six smaller arrows were on their way.

The Mandrill, meanwhile, charged at the monster. The monkey managed to land a single Power Attack on the monster. Will had no idea if the monkey did any damage, but it he could see small cracks spiderwebbing across the Devourer’s chitin, which probably meant that Power Attack’s armor reduction chance activated.

As soon as the attack landed, however, the monster roared at the Light Beast, and Will could actually see the air distorting and hitting the monkey with enough force to throw it away and into another wall.

The brief reprieve was enough for Will to get back on his feet, and the wombat charged at his enemy, hoping that fighting in melee range would be better than dodging the constant arrow barrage.

Hitting the large insect felt like hitting a wall. The monster didn’t even budge from the impact. Will, on the other hand, was forced to a very sudden and jarring stop.

The attack wasn’t completely futile, since Will’s nose horn was more than strong enough to pierce the bug’s weakened carapace.

But without knocking the monster down, Will’s charge left him open to a counterattack, which came in the form of rapid hits from the enemy’s front legs. The attack lacked the overwhelming power of the monster’s first charge, but was still strong enough to be felt, even through Will’s armor.

Will used Thundershade Burst, but failed to knock the immovable monster away, or even to stop the constant flurry of hits. The wombat retaliated with his own claws, which had little problem with piercing the monster’s chitin, but he had no idea how much damage he was actually doing.

Will’s simian minion jumped back into the fight, bashing the monster with its fists. Even with Power Attack, the monkey wasn’t very effective against the armored insect, but Will hoped it would at least manage to reduce the armor some more before it ran out of stamina.

Meanwhile, Will himself used his Mage skill again, this time in the form of Thundershade Volley, and fired all six bolts at the Devourer.

For the first time, the monster seemed to actually be affected by Will’s attack.

The insect jumped backwards, leaping ten meters as if it was nothing, and immediately started to stomp the ground. Just like its charge, each of the stomps shook the ground, causing Will and the Mandrill to stumble. A couple of seconds after the stomping started, large stones began to fall from the roof of the cave. The location of each stone seemed to be random, but there were more than enough of them falling to hit both wombat and monkey.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And while the stones weren’t doing much damage to Will, the Light Beast was taking a serious beating.

The shaking ground was bad enough that Will couldn’t even try to walk, and aiming any kind of skill or object was completely impossible. Thankfully, the stomping attack only lasted for about half a minute. Not so thankfully, it ended with another charge, which Will once again had no chance to dodge.

He did have enough time to activate the Shield aspect of his Mage skill, which mitigated enough of the damage that Will’s armor was enough to block the rest of it.

Which meant that he was actually able to move freely before the monster switched to its arrow barrage attack again.

And while Will was running around and avoiding the arrows, the monkey was attacking again. The Light Beast burned through the last bit of stamina it had, managing to cause another armor break in the process, but it also got hit point blank by the second batch of six arrows, which was enough to overwhelm its limited health pool and cause it to disperse into nothing.

Will assumed that the Devourer would use its sonic attack next, so he stayed away from the monster and hit it with another Thundershade Volley.

Instead of switching to its sonic attack, however, the monster began to rapidly draw and release the strings on its left antenna, firing a veritable storm of arrows.

The attack wasn’t so much aimed as it was everywhere. The arrows fell all over the room, with just a small circle around the monster itself left untouched.

Taking small but constant hits, Will charged at the monster. Once again, the monster couldn’t be budged. But Will was inside the safe circle from its attack now, and had scored another hit with his horn in the process.

And the monster wasn’t stopping the attack, even though there was nothing for it to hit.

So Will took advantage of it, and went to town with his claws.

The arrow barrage lasted for another half a minute, during which Will scored two dozen hits on the monster.

And then the Devourer switched to its sonic attack. But this wasn’t a single blast, like it’d used on the Light Beast.

No, this time the monster roared a constant, deafening torrent of sound. The sound pushed Will physically away from the insect. The wombat flew at the wall, and stayed there, a meter above the ground, held in place by the attack.

But while Will couldn’t move, there was nothing stopping him from using his skills. Volley after Thundershade Volley rained on the huge insect, and eventually, the roar was silenced.

Without the air pressure to hold him against the wall, Will fell painfully down on the floor. Fortunately for the battered and dazed wombat, a message screen popped up in front of him, informing him that no more attacks would be coming.

Heavy Metal Devourer slain!

Gained 50 XP

Heavy is the heart that beats like a drum!

Even if he doesn’t even have a heart!

Cause, you know, insects.

It took fifteen minutes before Will was capable (and willing) to move again. The dungeon clear message popped up after the victory message, but Will was too tired to even check out on the skill shard he’d gotten yet.

Dungeon: The Iron Mines of Westboardia cleared!

Gained 50 XP

1 basic skill shard

Dungeoneer skill upgraded.

OK, how the hell was this an easy dungeon? These things, especially the boss, were so much harder to fight than the pickles or the moles? How is this the same difficulty as them?

Regenerating enough mana to heal his numerous wounds as much as he could took an hour, and he was still left with a number of least and lesser wounds that started out as slight or minor.

During one of the waits, Will managed to work up enough motivation to Harvest the boss’s corpse.

Heavy Metal Devourer harvested!

Gained 1 Heavy Metal Chitin.

Gained 1 Boots of the Beat (uncommon).

The boots were interesting. They didn’t count as armor, apparently, and didn’t offer any actual protection. The special ability, on the other hand, was interesting.

Boots of the Beat

Rarity: uncommon

Type: boots

When running, gives the option to spend 1 stamina per second to stagger everyone standing on the ground in a radius of ten meters around the wearer.

These boots once belonged to a world class drummer, and they still carry an echo of his loud but rhythmical skill.

Don’t ask me why they’re suitable for a wombat.

Socks not included.

There were only two of the boots, and it looked like they’d fit nicely on Will’s hind feet. Not that Will was going to wear them. Not without the unincluded socks, at least.

He didn’t want to use them at all, really. Wearing used boots felt extremely icky. But the ability would work fantastically well with his charge attack. Will figured that he’d want to clean them really well, but he’d end up using them.

Given a pair of socks, anyway. The things looked to be made of stiff leather and would definitely chafe, otherwise.

Finally looking at the skill shard he’d gotten for clearing the mine, Will was completely unsurprised to see that it was for the Mining skill.

Yeah, what else would I get for clearing a mine? I wonder if it might be a good time to start using them for the XP instead of selling them.

Putting the shard back in his inventory, Will left the room, and with it the dungeon.