Camila grunted with effort as she pulled on the lever to open the rusty iron door. The painful sound of metal creaking filled the cavern until the bolts suddenly broke free and slammed open. Letting out a breath, the Berserker kicked the heavy door open and turned back to the others.

“Good job Cam, very cool,” Ty said, giving her a thumbs up.

“Shut up.”

Allen laughed to himself as his wrist popped back into place. “They should get together or something.”

Amelia nodded at him and stepped back, “Okay, um, I’m done,” she said. Then she looked off to the side, likely checking her status.

After another few moments of lazy hesitation, the group moved through the door. A few dozen steps past the threshold, they were met by a shaft leading straight down into the shadows. It was no different than the rest of the dungeon had been, and since it was natural, the shaft was just another cave formation. The only indication that they were supposed to go down was a rope tied around a metal peg with its other end hanging down the hole. That, and the fact that there was nothing else on the other side of the door.

“Did you get a flying skill?” Allen asked Christopher. The group stopped at the hole, Camila looking down it with a smirk.

“No, but I did get my first Seer skill,” Christopher replied absently. “Tier one, Lower Clairvoyance. It only shows me vague and conditional visions of the near future.”

Allen backed up to Christopher so the professor could grab around his shoulders. He continued with his questions as he picked up the rope and half-heartedly tested if it was secure; most straight forward dungeons tended not to resort to such tricks. “That sounds sort of like one of my skills,” he began, “What’re its limitations?”

Christopher thought to himself for a moment. The two were already repelling down the vertical shaft when he spoke. “Well, ‘lower’ implies that it is weakened, or essentially that it is not full clairvoyance. I doubt the visions will be anything more than imprecise predictions or ambiguous feelings. Additionally, it’s a passive, so I cannot control its effects or activation.”

Allen grunted affirmatively. “That’s a lot like Killer Instinct for me,” he said.

“Hmm. I’m not sure if my skill is limited to battle though,” the professor said absently, drawing the conversation to a close.

Allen cleared his mind as he repelled down the shaft and into the darkness. Only the request for an additional light so he could see broke the comfortable silence. Then a few more minutes passed before the two had reached the bottom.

They emerged near the edge of another room and the light from Christopher’s spell illuminated just enough to be sure that it was the same size as the last one. That is, around two-hundred meters to the other end and a hundred across. It was decidedly not exciting at all. The second floor looked just like the one before it: a perfectly natural cave.

“Sense anything?” Allen asked the professor.

Christopher groaned as he let himself fall off Allen’s back and into his wheelchair that appeared right below him. “The dungeon’s arcane resonance interferes with my Mana Sense so I can’t accurately detect anything more than a few dozen meters away. I can only sense the general presence and location of the things in here.” He muttered to himself and pointed into the darkness of the cave to his left. “The closest monster is around ten meters that way, and it isn’t a Shade Ghoul,” he said.

Allen glanced in that direction but was unsurprisingly incapable of seeing anything but the vague outlines of rock formations. Ty dropped down into the second floor moment later, followed by Camila and then Amelia a few minutes apart. They all took a few seconds to look around before sighing collectively.

“No change?” Ty asked rhetorically.

“Nope,” Allen replied, not looking back from the shadows ten meters out to his left.

“Alright, lets get this over with,” Camila said and whistled into the cave. Her magically enhanced provocation carried just far enough to get the attention of anything nearby.

It didn’t take long for a series of hisses and screeches to answer from the shadows. The sounds filled the cave, but they echoed from every direction, making the monsters impossible to track that way. Fortunately, Christopher could pinpoint the location of their mana as soon as they were within range.

“It’s coming, Allen,” Christopher announced, “Likely not above level ten but its fast… and small.”

Allen couldn’t hear anything other than the echoing screeches of ghouls, but he listened into the cave anyway. He lifted his knife in one hand and sunk into a stance.

“Now!” Christopher shouted.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

In that same instant, a small creature no larger than a cat shot out of the shadows at Allen. It was pale and bony in the same way as the ghouls, but it looked more like a spider, or maybe a crab. Allen couldn’t make out much else since the creature was wreathed in shadow magic while it flew towards him.

It was fast, but not fast enough to get past him while he was actively waiting for it to pounce. He immediately lashed out with his knife. The monster squealed as it tore through the air, six bony claws pointed forward. Allen sidestepped as the monster impaled itself on his knife. It hissed as he flicked it onto the ground, sending a splatter of sticky black blood with it. Allen smirked as he caught sight of its nametag.

Name: Shade Crawler

Lesser Undead Spawn – Monster – Level 7

The crawler hissed futilely before Allen squashed its head area under his boot.

Then he looked up to see Camila and Ty engaging two Shade Ghouls. One was already heavily injured while the other was trying its best to get around Ty so it could tear apart the Berserker.

Allen wasted no time. He dashed towards the weakened ghoul and landed a flying kick on its side. His boot landed expertly between the monster’s spikes of bone, slamming it into a rock where it was then beheaded by Camila.

The Assassin landed nimbly before darting around Ty with his knife covered in Miasma. A two-minute charge of Strike was emptied into the other ghoul, destroying its neck and severing its head in a spray of more vile blood.

With that, the battle was over. However, much like before, no messages popped up since Christopher was busy leading the other monsters away with magical constructs.

Allen stepped over the corpse of the Shade Ghoul as he made his way back to Christopher and Amelia. He noticed the later squatting next to the Crawler and poking it with a finger, a pleasant smile on her face.

Allen mirrored her smile when she looked up at him. “It’s kind of like a face hugger,” he said.

“Mhm.” The girl nodded. “No, um, acid blood though.”

“Lame.”

Ty groaned. “Uh… yo, we should probably skip a few floors. This repetitive shit ain’t fun.”

“Yes, please,” Camila added, looking bored. “We should keep going down until everything is over level fifty at least.” She looked around the group, gaging the mostly non-reactions.

“If you insist,” Christopher replied, “I’ll distract the monsters around us, but I can’t say how effective my efforts will fare against the floor boss.”

Allen shrugged and started walking into the cave. They were right. Grinding lower leveled monsters was generally an ineffective strategy; doing so would just decrease the amount of experience they all got for killing the more dangerous ones. Bypassing the early floors would get them more experience in the long run.

The others took a moment but quickly fell into step behind Allen with Amelia pushing the professor. They walked through the cave in silence while the screeches and hisses of monsters surrounded them on every side. Not many of the ghouls or crawlers got past Christopher’s magical distractions, but those that did were swiftly dealt with by Allen or Camila.

The uneven and often inconvenient terrain of the cave made navigating very time consuming, so it took them nearly twenty minutes to get to the other side of the room. Finally, once they did, they were met with another wrought iron door set into the wall.

However, the floor boss was far more distinctly noticeable than that door. It was a horrid creature that lumbered around on seven stubby, uneven appendages. Its lower body looked like a few Shade Ghouls had been fused together with little thought of practicality. Then, bursting from its back was a massive bulbous sack of thinly stretched skin filled with black puss. The monster was easily four meters tall and just as round.

Allen identified it as the group stopped to hide behind a rock formation. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to respond to the increased light in any way. It just plodded around, groaning periodically from multiple heads.

Name: Gloom Carrier

Lesser Undead – Monster – Level 37

The thing would have deeply unsettled anyone not entirely used to seeing the monsters typically inhabiting dungeons. Of course, the sight of it had little to no effect on the group; Amelia actually seemed interested in it.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Camila whispered, squinting at the monster. “It’s got the little shits in it,” she said in mock surprise.

Allen’s brow knotted as he watched the Gloom Carrier turn around; its sack undulated dangerously on top of it. Straining his eyes, he could see hundreds of tiny forms squirming and wriggling around in the monster’s sack.

“Eggs?” Allen guessed. “If it has the Crawlers in it then its literally just a copy of that thing from Halo.”

“Ey yo, I’d rather not,” Ty added, subtly averting his eyes. “Ain’t worth the XP.”

“I agree, can you distract it while I get the door open?” Camila asked, already standing up.

“Distracting shit is your job,” Allen mused, getting a sharp glare in response. Then he sighed, “Christopher can blind it, then I’ll carry him through the door.”

The five of them nodded to each other as Christopher grabbed on to Allen’s back again, his wheelchair disappearing into his inventory. They readied themselves at the edge of the shadows for only a moment before Camila whispered the word “Go.”

A bright light promptly erupted in the Gloom Carrier’s face. It made an agonized moaning sound before stumbling around. Its overfull egg sack wobbled grotesquely as it spun and smashed one of its faces into a nearby rock formation.

The group was already at the door by then and Camila was pulling hard on the lever to open it. The creaking of the rusty metal was interrupted by a wet bursting sound, followed by an awful, warm stench.

Curious, Allen watched as the carrier’s egg sack tore open on a rock, spilling a mass of black chunky soup all over the cave. Except, instead of potatoes and carrots, there were countless squirming forms of Shade Crawlers immersed in the black muck.

The carrier wailed again, and the crawlers came alive just as Camila got the door open. The group quickly rushed through the threshold, though Amelia was still glancing over her shoulder with a strange expression.

The Berserker slammed the heavy iron door shut and kicked the lever back into the locked position. A metallic thud echoed through the smaller space a second later, but then there was nothing.

Only after having a second to breathe did Ty deem it safe to let out his pent-up reaction. “Fucking fuck! Bruh, that was some nasty ass shit.”