The party had barely entered the next hallway before they encountered their first monsters- but they were all dead. Grotesque and warped creatures were strewn about the hall, maimed in unique and horrifying ways. Rinnie and Tiriana didn’t even comment on it as they headed in, poking around the corpses in search of traps.

“…I wasn’t expecting the traps to kill the monsters too, honestly,” Sera admitted to Vivi, keeping her voice low so as to not attract unwanted attention.

“Yeah…I kind of assumed they’d just be ignored automatically or something,” the cleric replied.

“It’s not something you see often. The first generation tends to clear out all the physical traps they’re capable of triggering, and the survivors figure out how to avoid the magical ones. Once an ecosystem forms the newcomers get hunted and eaten before they have much chance to die to traps, and eventually you end up with monsters that are just too tough to die to them,” Cadenza explained in her usual sing-song voice, as casually as if she were speaking to students on a field trip.

Which, Sera supposed, she kind of was.

“Do they always look so…ugly?” Sera asked, examining one of the bodies Rinnie and Tiriana had moved past. It looked vaguely mammalian. Four legs, a bit of a snout, and fur. But it had been mutated almost past the point of recognition, with extra joints, places where its fur had fused into scales or quills, cancerous lumps, and protruding bone. Looking at it, Sera thought it was a wonder it could move at all- although maybe it couldn’t, and that’s why it was dead.

“Not always, no. They’re mist-warped. It’s what happens when an animal goes from an environment with no mana to dungeon levels of concentration. They can’t regulate it and their bodies mutate.” Cadenza seemed just as unfazed as the others, so it seemed like a common enough occurrence for adventurers to be inured to it.

“Why aren’t all the animals in the inner ring monsters?” Vivi surprised Sera by asking. Given that the cleric was a native she was expecting her to know that much, even if she’d been surprised by the traps.

“The mana levels increased there over thousands of years. Animals had time to adapt. I’m sure in the beginning some were warped, but the survivors were either resistant or able to circulate mana properly. By now they all just do it instinctively or they form a mana crystal and become monsters the controlled way.” Even as she spoke, Cadenza was keeping a careful eye on her surroundings. She always kept herself partially turned so she would see anything coming up behind them, occasionally glancing forward to maintain her awareness of the situation ahead as well.

As for what she’d said…that actually answered a question Sera hadn’t realized she’d had. Something had always seemed odd about the existence of monsters and it occurred to her now that it was the fact animals existed at all- like the flokkas and gobshite. Monsters simply didn’t have an inherent advantage, as animals were essentially warriors while monsters were mages, to use the terms she’d heard from Tiriana. Or…maybe the latter were closer to battlemages. No one had said anything indicating they were physically frail.

“Other than the crystals, what makes monsters different from animals?” she asked after working the question over in her mind and realizing it was best to just ask.

“Aggression, for one. No one is really sure why, but the prevailing theory is that monsters can’t circulate their mana properly because they’re focused on concentrating it, so their brains are corrupted somehow. They can use a bit of magic, but usually not more than one type each. Some kind of natural inclination. And they’re a bit weaker, physically, but still stronger than the average person,” Cadenza answered, confirming Sera’s last theory as the correct one. Being stronger than ‘the average person’ meant something different here, too: warriors being more common than mages, that meant monsters were stronger than people that might be considered literally superhuman on Earth.

It was at times like these that Sera wondered whether she should be accompanying the group, but only Layla seemed to object and Cadenza had claimed it to be normal. On the other hand, Vivi wasn’t much use in a fight either, so maybe it just wasn’t that much bigger of a burden to defend two noncombatants than one so long as they remained close together.

Not to mention that everyone knew Sera would eventually be a mage herself. She could feel herself getting close to solidifying a core of her own, but that didn’t mean much when she’d never been given a real timeframe. The question of how long it took to do so begat frustratingly vague answers; it varied quite a bit per person, and the amount of effort put in could change the timeline. Some people just weren’t suited to it, either, and for them even monumental dedication wouldn’t make the process faster than the average.

With no more questions left to ask for the moment, Sera looked to see what the others were up to.

Ahead, Rinnie crouched to pry a brick up from the floor and shoved a wedge into the mechanism below before replacing the brick, preventing the pressure plate from activating. When she was done she examined a nearby monster corpse that looked like it was burned and then turned to Tiriana.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Any magical traps?” she asked more civilly than usual. Was she feeling less threatened by Tiriana now that she wasn’t in a quasi-leadership position?

“Flamethrower spell. I’m blocking it so it can’t detect us, but you might want to mark the spot for the way back,” Tiriana replied from a few steps behind Rinnie, pointing to where she’d identified the spell. Sera couldn’t see anything there, and Rinnie probably couldn’t either, but Tiriana was the magic expert.

“You can’t disable it entirely?” Rinnie followed up while retrieving something from her pocket. It turned out to be some kind of marker with glowing ink- impossible to miss even in the dark. She used it to draw out a flame in the spot Tiriana indicated.

“It would be difficult. I’d need to be touching it and any tampering with the spell itself will activate it. It’s a lot easier to just cast an illusion over its detection range to make it think it’s seeing an empty hallway, because I don’t have to interfere with it directly,” the elf explained.

“That won’t affect our ability to see?”

“It’s not using sight to detect us.”

Satisfied, Rinnie stood and moved on. A lot of the physical traps had already been triggered on hapless monsters, resulting in bodies skewered with spears or riddled with arrows. One had been crushed when the ceiling descended, and unlike the others, that trap reset itself and had needed to be disarmed. Tiriana just baffled the senses of each magical trap, all of which could activate over and over so long as the dungeon was powering them, and Rinnie marked each one with a symbol indicating what it would do and where its spell circle was hidden.

“Who does this to a place they have to live in?” Vivi wondered aloud as the two leading the way disarmed yet another trap. Everyone was starting to truly understand how heavily trapped the underground sections of the fortress were for the first time now that both varieties were in working order.

“They probably had some way of deactivating the traps or ensuring they recognized people who were supposed to be here,” Cadenza said with a shrug. “Pretty typical sort of precaution in a mage’s workshop- and those tend to have a higher chance of becoming dungeons, so in dungeons as well.”

“I think there was something like that in the main core chamber, but it must not have controlled this section,” Sera noted. “Maybe there’s a way to turn these off in the secondary core chamber.” Which wasn’t terribly useful right now, but might at least make their egress simpler.

“Found a room,” Rinnie announced. “Don’t see a lock or any traps.”

“Let’s clear it before we move on. No sense leaving our way out littered with monsters,” Cadenza decided. Nodding, Tiriana moved up to the door.

“I’ll put up a one way barrier so they can’t detect us, but I can’t hide the door opening,” she told Rinnie. When she was finished Rinnie cracked the door open a crack and looked inside, then carefully shut it.

“Whole group of them in there. Probably a pack since they haven’t turned on each other. Can’t tell what the room was for though because they kind of trashed it. Wanna make yourself useful, paperweight?” Rinnie relayed before taking a snipe at Layla. The warrior bristled and took a step forward, but Cadenza’s voice cut in before she could do anything more.

“Not the place for this,” she scolded without raising her voice. Somehow everyone heard it loud and clear anyway. “Layla, go ahead and clear them out.”

Wordlessly, the armored woman stepped up to the door and cast it open, poleaxe in hand. She stepped through before the monsters could react, giving herself space to use her long weapon. Although Sera couldn’t see inside from her position, she could hear the sounds of broken shells and bones along with the yelps of injured and dying monsters. Rinnie and Tiriana just stood and watched, so Layla seemed to have it well in hand.

“Is it normal to just send one party member to clear a room?” Sera inquired, seeing everyone standing around.

“Normally the rearguard would stand lookout and everyone else would go in,” Vivi explained quietly. “But Layla isn’t normal.”

That put a lot of things into perspective. So far Sera had only seen Layla fight the nachzehrer, which had been nearly even. But if Layla was that strong, it upped the threat level of the nachzehrer in her mind. Then again, if their armor was ferrous…Cadenza was sort of a hard-counter to them. At least in theory.

It wasn’t long before Layla emerged, armor spattered with blood. She waved a hand and the blood dropped away, leaving her armor spotless again. As the group continued forward, Sera eventually reached the door with Vivi and they peered inside. Although she’d half expected the monsters to be small- like goblins or something- they were actually at least the size of jaguars. They didn’t just out-mass Rinnie; the shelled quadrupeds had been larger than Vivi.

“I’m not sure if I’m sad I missed that or relieved,” Vivi muttered while looking at the broken bodies. They’d been mangled too badly to make much out, but what little was left seemed remarkably consistent compared to the dead creatures littering the hallway.

“I can see why she was so confident about exploring solo,” Sera commented. “Should we…gather their magic crystals or something?”

Looking over the carnage herself, Cadenza shook her head. “I doubt she left much for us to collect. They probably weren’t very pure in a dungeon this young anyway. I don’t think these ones were mist-warped, but it didn’t seem like they used much magic against Layla, so they probably only formed their crystals recently.”

With that, the trio caught up to Layla and continued on. It was still slow going with Rinnie needing to find the trigger for every trap that had killed a monster and ensure it wasn’t still working, but they made progress bit by bit. Considering how long it was taking one might think the hallway they were in to be particularly long, but it really wasn’t- it was just very dangerous.

When they were nearing the end, Rinnie froze and drew her bow. In a mirror of a similar event weeks ago, she nocked an arrow and fired, striking something hiding in the shadow of a broken light. It tumbled to the ground and this time everyone knew what it was: another nachzehrer skull spider.