Sleep didn’t come easy to any of us that night, but we knew we needed it. We all woke up earlier than we usually did and prepared ourselves for the challenging and exciting task of discovering the deepest corners of the mountain.
"How are you feeling?" Ares asked when we met him at the entrance of the mines.
"I just want to get this over with," I said.
"I know this is the smart thing to do, but I can't help but feel bad that we'll be off on an unrelated task while everyone else is on edge," Artemis said.
"This isn't directly related to the attack, but it is our best bet for ending this once and for all,” I replied. “And I’ll need you all to make sure the people under you are ready for what’s coming. Talk to them once we come back.”
“You should talk to everyone too,” Ares said.
“I plan to,” I replied. “Right before the attack. How is the evacuation going, by the way?"
"Let's start making our way inside and I'll fill you all in," Aphrodite said.
The miners were more than happy to see us and I noticed they were now giving Artemis as much respect as they gave me, which was great to see. She was a great leader and protector of these people and she deserved their utmost respect.
"Every Dion resident has been evacuated, but we’re not finished yet," Aphrodite continued once we were inside one of the carts, taking us down to the deepest part of the mine. "They’re still bringing things through the portal."
"Livestock?" Hephaestus asked.
"No, they were some of the first to cross," she replied. "Mostly valuables and other things that aren't easily replaced."
"What of their morale?" I asked, concerned about how they were handling all this. "Are they cursing their luck?"
"Not cursing, no. They’re working hard and are looking forward to see this done. If I had to guess what they're thinking, I'd say it's more that this is a necessary evil and they're all doing their part."
"Speaking of them doing their part," Ares jumped in, "are they going to fight?"
"Dion is not a town of warriors," Aphrodite said. "Most of the people living there are fishermen, merchants, and farmers. The few that can fight, will."
"And the rest?" he asked her.
"They will go into the mines along with our non-combatant population. We’ve created some safe large zones inside the mines with enough provisions to last them for days, though I hope they'll not need them."
"Yeah, if the dome falls and our walls are breached, it won't matter if we have food to last us for ages," I agreed. "But I have confidence we can end this quickly."
The cart stopped with a loud thud and we all jumped out. The pygmies here looked more like they were prepared for battle than ready to go digging, but I guessed that was to be expected with them being so close to monsters.
"This is the furthest they can hold the line," Artemis said, pointing at the few miners who were working on the walls. "Beyond this cavern, the monsters become increasingly powerful and aggressive, so I need to escort them myself and make sure they don't stray too far."
We made our way through a narrow corridor and exited into another large chamber. The difference in this one was that it was filled with roaming monsters.
They looked a lot like moles only they were almost as large as humans, and they seemed to have metal plates protecting their backs. I hadn’t seen this type of monster before, but it looked like it belonged in this place.
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Name: Armored Danku of Mount Olympus
Type: Beast
Level: 26
Disposition: Aggressive
HP: 487/487
Physical Attack: 79
Magic Attack: 57
Speed: 150
Attack Range: Melee
XP: 1268
Description: Dankus are large burrowing mammals that feed on the energy leylines of large mountains and underground tunnels connected to elemental planes of earth. The dankus that evolved in the mountain known as Olympus have feasted upon the dormant place of power and its mana radiation for hundreds of generations. This exposure has altered their physical form, making them slightly more agile and also forming a metal protection on their exteriors.
* * *
"They're not too difficult to kill but they just keep coming if you stick around," Artemis said. "If we're to push the boundaries of what the miners can do by themselves, we'll need to find a way to repel them, because I don't think there's an end to them."
The beasts didn't seem to notice us at first but moved around lazily, sniffing the ground and occasionally digging with their claws, moving dirt and rocks aside with remarkable ease.
"Let's not waste too much time on them then," I said and marched forward, prompting two of the beasts to charge at me. "We'll just move through them."
The beasts did their best to attack me but all it took was a swipe of my lance and they were soon laying on ground dead. As their last breaths left their bodies, small holes opened in the ground beneath them and they were devoured by others of their kind.
Pretty soon, I understood what Artemis meant when she said that there would be to end to them. More and more came out of the ground and attacked us as we crossed the cavern. Dispatching them didn’t even slow us down that much but it still felt like a waste of our time.
"Aphrodite, give us a buff to increase our speed," I said.
"Do you want the full buff treatment already?" she asked.
"No need for that," I replied. "Just the speed one so we can get further inside faster."
She obliged and we were soon sprinting through the monsters who followed us in a crowd of dozens. Once we reached the other end of the large cavern where a new tunnel started, I began taking them out with wide swipes of my spear.
The effect of multiple dankus dying and being devoured from under the ground was quite fascinating in large numbers. But I still didn't want us spending any more time here than we absolutely needed to.
Once we made sure no more monsters were following us, we headed into the next part of the underground complex. The situation there was quite similar, only with slightly more powerful monsters and different coloration on the walls. Artemis gave us some information about the monsters and their attack patterns every time we encountered a new type.
None of them posed any real threat to someone on our level, even if we were by ourselves, let alone a whole group of us with Aphrodite's buffs. But I could see how this wouldn’t be a good place for the miners to come, even with the assistance of warriors or Artemis herself.
It made sense for them to continue working in a place where there was no need for any of them to put down their pickaxes and take up their weapons in fear of being attacked. And the deeper we traveled into the mountain, the more apparent this became. After a certain point, it was evident that the monsters would have been powerful enough to easily kill the miners with the lowest levels. The levels of the monsters then quickly jumped to the low forties, which meant they would probably pose a significant challenge even for our professional warriors.
The walls of the caverns down here were mostly naturally formed, with only a few exceptions where Artemis and the miners had had a particularly good run and managed to reach this deep. A few minutes later, after sprinting down tunnels and killing more monsters, even those few instances stopped appearing.
There was no sign of a tool having carved the walls down here and the monsters were oddly less aggressive to our presence. Whether it was because they were curious as to what they were seeing—since they probably hadn’t seen humanoids before—or because they didn’t think we would harm them, they didn’t attack us until we were almost on top of them.
Still we moved deeper down into the tunnels, making our way to the heart of the mountain. The air was becoming stale and the temperature rose steadily, so much that Aphrodite offered to cast her small cleaning spell on all of us to cool us down and ease the atmosphere.
Right when the heat was beginning to become unbearable, even with the powerful magical protections we’d brought with us, we reached a long tunnel with an extraordinary glow at the other end. The light seemed like it was slowly shifting between reddish-yellow hues, not as fast as one would have expected from the dancing flames of a bonfire but rather the light of the sun reflecting upon a very slow-moving river. I walked right to the edge of the tunnel and turned around the corner to see that this impression was actually pretty close to what was there.
Of course, no sunlight reached the bottom of Olympus and there was no river. Or rather there was one, but it was made from lava and not water. The slowly shifting light emanated from the lava flowing sluggish from one side of a gigantic, naturally formed chamber to the other.
The moment my foot stepped out of the tunnel and into the general area of the chamber, I was greeted with a notification.
* * *
You have entered the Heart of Mount Olympus.
This is a level 55 endless waves dungeon.
The current record is: 0 waves by —.
* * *
"What the hell is this place?" I muttered.