"What? Are you sure about that?" exclaimed Five.
A few seconds ago, he was calmly lying on his bed and was about to finally fall asleep. The days were pretty boring especially since he spent most of his time studying the monsters. He was trying to be a good dungeon master and so, it was imperative to know the monsters he could summon.
Today, he spent some time browsing through the forum, hoping that someone had released some information about the trial but unfortunately, nobody did. Apart from a few threads where everyone presented themselves or asked to join a particular alliance, the other dungeon masters did not use the forum much.
Five was nervous. ‘This trial should not be too hard, right? According to what Gaia previously said, after I gave up on Harriet and the harpies, the difficulty should have decreased significantly.’
Five was lying with his eyes closed when suddenly, he heard his door being flung open as the three young harpies stormed the place. Alice was naturally the one leading the group and she quickly came to the side of the bed while shouting, "Master! There are monsters coming! Wake Up!"
Five was stunned by seeing the 3 harpies rush to him but although he was about to sleep, his mind was clear. He immediately got up before asking for an explanation.
Ariel explained how they were flying around the forest when they saw a tide of beasts coming.
Five could only curse to himself, 'D*mnit, I was so focused on the barbarians that I forgot about the beasts of the forest... It is true, I forgot about it when they did not come as soon as the dungeon was founded... Normally, they should have been the first to come to the dungeon, but it seems that the system kept them for the trial...'
"Alice, go inform Dreidus and Lyra. They also need to know about this," said Five as he quickly grabbed the dungeon core. The precious dungeon core basically stayed in Five's room most of the time.
He did not have a throne room like Kroff but only now as Dreidus and Lyra also entered the room, did he realize that they were invading his private space. He made a personal note to later, make a throne room to avoid having to meet all his monsters in his own room. He quickly got up and brought everyone to the common room where there was enough space for everyone to sit down.
"Are you sure that the beasts are coming here? The entrance to the dungeon is quite hard to reach, maybe they are just running away from something?" asked Dreidus.
"Isn't it too coincidental? With the warning of the trial, I think they are really aiming for the dungeon. We just need to wait for a few minutes and they will arrive!" said Ariel.
After a brief moment of silence, Dreidus nodded, "Then what kind of beasts did you see? We can probably start making some preparations just in case..."
As they heard the question, the three harpies did not immediately answer. Instead, they looked at each other unsure of themselves. "We..."
"We did not see what beast they were... It was dark and only saw shadows moving but we are confident that they are beasts!" explained Alice.
Lyra suspiciously looked at the harpies but did not say anything. She was sitting next to Dreidus, looking more like a maid waiting to receive orders.
Although he did not receive any answer, Dreidus did not get angry at the harpies, "Fine... In that case, we can only wait and see!"
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Five nodded, there was not much they could do even with the information of which beasts were attacking. He used the dungeon core to open a large screen, displaying the entrance of the dungeon.
As the barbarians were constantly mining the first floor, the entrance and all the tunnels were considerably enlarged. They were already large enough to be considered as a real first floor.
A few minutes later, as the harpies had said, a group of beasts wildly rushed through the entrance. The camera of the dungeon was limited to only seeing the inside of the dungeon; as such, they had no idea of how many monsters were making their way to the dungeon.
On the screen, all Five and the others saw was an unending stream of Wild Boars pouring inside the dungeon. The Wild Boars ranged from level 13 to level 16. They were not very strong individually but at the moment, they were charging as a group; it would be hard to stop them!
Five tensed up as he saw the beasts, there seemed to be an infinite amount of them. In just a few seconds, he already lost track of how many wild boars entered his dungeon but fortunately, the interface displayed that information. In less than 10 seconds, 25 boars already entered and there were no signs of them stopping.
The first floor was completely defenseless and so, the wild boars progressed through the floor, unhindered. The scary part was that the wild boars always took the right tunnel that led to the stairs!
"Dreidus! Are the skeletons ready?" asked Five.
"Yes! I already used [Dead Mind]!"
"Good! Make them wait just behind corners. The wild boars will be forced to slow down to make the sharp turns in the labyrinth! It will be the best moment to strike them," commanded Five.
The wild boars were charging at their top speed and quickly, the first one arrived at the stairs. Meanwhile, at the entrance of the dungeon, another group of beasts entered the dungeon. That group consisted of Apes ranging from level 16 to level 19!
By now, Five's interface displayed that 100 wild boars entered the dungeon and quickly, the number of Apes soared! Compared to the wild boars, the Apes were much slower but that was not necessarily a good thing.
At the end of the first floor, the wild boars were madly charging down the stairs. They were strangely able to avoid falling down and messing their formation. However, when facing the relatively narrow entrance of the labyrinth, some wild boars were forced to stop.
The corridors were only wide enough to allow two lines of wild boars to charge in at a time, the other lines needed to wait. The loud steps of the wild boars resonated through the labyrinth as they blindly charged in but as they reached the end of the corridor, the first wild boars were forced to slow down.
The corridors of the labyrinth were all positioned at 90° angles to each other which made it hard to successfully turn at high speed. As if the entire group of boars was in synchrony, they all started to slow down such that they would not bump into each other.
However, as the first wild boars finally reached the end of the first corridor, they were greeted by 6 skeletons, 3 on each side who without hesitation, started to claw at the wild boars.
As they saw the skeletons, the wild boars did not even consider them as enemies, they simply charged and stomped them on the ground without putting in much effort. These skeletons were just the ones patrolling near the entrance; they were all level 10 which was 3 levels below the weakest wild boar. It would be a miracle if the frail skeletons were able to stop them.
The wild boars again all turned left, taking the shortest path that led to the end of the labyrinth. At each turn, they always ended up picking the right one!
Along the way, the wild boars encountered several groups of skeletons which were progressively becoming stronger, but it was not until they were close to the center that the wild boars had to actually fight seriously to get rid of the skeletons. The ones near the center were level 14 skeletons using swords and shields.
They lasted for a good amount of time against the wild boars and even took down a few of them but in the end, they were overwhelmed by the never-ending stream of wild boars. The other monsters also did their best but were not very effective.
The shades would jump out of the black puddles and would claw the nearest wild boars before sneakily returning to their puddle form. With their sneaky nature, the shades were able to avoid the attacks of the wild boars, but the beasts were not stupid either. After seeing that they could not harm that monster, they simply ignored all the shades they met.
The monsters were free to attack the wild boars as much as they wanted but unfortunately, the shades were not very strong and could only inflict a limited amount of damage to the pack of wild boars.
As for the Mimics, they did not last long in front of the wild boars. The beasts did not care about the loot they might contain, they mercilessly stomped all the mimics they encountered. Having lost the element of surprise, the mimics were not very useful in holding back the wild boars.
It was only at the later portion of the labyrinth that the number of wild boars considerably decreased. The skeletons there were all rather high leveled and wore armors to protect themselves while using decent weapons. The wild boars actually had to fight them to death before being able to continue on their way. Their number gradually dwindled from 100 to 20 as they were about to reach the end of the labyrinth.
At that moment, a thought crossed Five's mind. He suddenly exclaimed, "Now that I think about it since it is the night cycle, I should be able to modify the dungeon! What if I change the walls of the labyrinth to force the wild boars to the portion of the labyrinth where there are still skeletons?"
"Great idea, master!" exclaimed Alice.
Dreidus silently nodded. He was not very satisfied with the performance of the skeletons. He hoped that they would at least be able to deal with all the wild boars but as it turned out, they failed.
Five quickly opened the dungeon interface to try his idea. Unfortunately, it seemed that the system already saw through him as he received a system prompt:
[System prompt: Due to special circumstance, you are unable to immediately modify the second floor. Would you like to save the changes and apply them at the end of the trial?]
"D*mnit..."