After killing the Gloom Carriers and exterminating the Crawlers, there had only been five Casters and six Shade Walkers left on the sixth floor. Then, with another two hours, the group had taken out all but two of them. The two remaining monsters were the most difficult to deal with, however. For whatever reason, they just refused to be coaxed into separating by Christopher’s magic.

So, not willing to wait any longer, the group decided to fight them both at the same time.

Allen stood with his back pressed against the cold, black stone of the sixth floor. He focused on the fake darkness around him, noticing how it shifted and deepened. The Gloom Caster’s illusions were trivial to see through, but in this way, he could use them to track the monster instead.

Whenever the Caster moved while shrouded in its invisibility illusion, the shadows it formed to mask itself would distort ever so slightly. That was enough for Allen to tell when the monster was about to make a move. The difficult part was the Shade Walker. It invoked a dark magic fog that rendered Christopher’s mana tracking useless.

That was why Allen had resorted to watching the illusions. They were his specialty, so to speak, and by comparison, the Gloom Caster was barely an amateur. Allen could discern not only the minute changes in the way the monster’s illusions revealed themselves in his mind, but the cause for such effects as well.

“Where is it!?” Ty shouted from the middle of an open space in the cave. Amelia and the two mages stood, or sat in Christopher’s case, behind him,.

Camila growled as she darted around the cave, lashing out at any movement she perceived through the cloudiness of her mind. It was mostly ineffective, but at the same time it was really funny. Allen certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her to stop.

Still, Camila could handle herself, even while essentially unconscious.

“I can’t tell,” Christopher replied, “I don’t have much experience with mind magic.”

Allen peeked around a stalagmite. He already knew that the Gloom Caster’s mind magic abilities weren’t potent enough to mask its presence while it moved. Moving objects simply demanded too much attention in the brain. Not even a level four hundred Gloom Caster would be capable of such a feat. Therefore, he knew it was standing still somewhere while the Walker was hiding in its fog dark magic.

Darkness from the Shade Walker poured into the area around Ty and the others. Camila snarled. Allen watched as the angle of the illusory shadows shifted instantaneously. The loss of immersion suddenly made the shadows look cartoonishly fake and far too contrasting to be real. It was an effect that would last until his focus was broken. However, with Dead Calm tripling his focus and steadying his mind, losing it was unlikely.

“The illusion changed, which means it recasted the spell… It can’t keep itself invisible while it’s moving so it recasts the spell each time it does to keep the illusion from breaking… That’s pretty dumb.”

The shadows shifted again, and Allen noticed. “Huh, it’s not very good at good at trigonometry,” he mused. Though he was still completely aware that if he hadn’t already cracked the illusion in his mind, he wouldn’t have been able to notice the slight shifts at all.

The angle of the shadows was shifting away from the direction that the dark fog was rolling in from, which was the same direction that Ty and everyone else were looking in. In other words, it was struggling to keep the angle of the shadows matching with Christopher’s mana light.

Allen knew that the angles shifting that way meant the Gloom Caster was closing in from behind. They all made the same mistake since they were all the same monster, just copy-pasted by the dungeon.

He slipped out of his hiding spot and silently made his way to another position behind his teammates.

A deathly wail came from the direction of the rolling fog. The dark magic surged upwards into a wave and rushed towards Ty. It crashed on a barrier of miasma that Christopher had formed a moment before. Then the Shade Walker emerged from the darkness as it parted around the group of four at the professor’s command.

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Name: Shade Walker

Lesser Undead – Monster – Level 64

Camila roared and rushed at the Walker with her greatsword. The monster hissed back and started throwing Shadowbolts at her. Christopher raised a faintly glowing hand and the projectiles swerved just enough to allow the Berserker to more easily dodge them.

Allen settled under a low, rocky shelf formation where he thought the Caster would come out from. He waited there in silence.

The Shade Walker howled again. Its voice was hoarser, and its body was thinner than the ghouls. It was essentially the mage variant of the ghouls, so its claws were significantly smaller. It was still similar to the ghouls though, namely in how demented and malformed it was.

The Walker had two heads and three arms, gruesome spines all over its body, and a mouth of small triangle-shaped teeth stretched into a monstrous grin. Dark magic swirled around it and coalesced in front of its hands before flying off with the speed of an arrow.

The spells flew towards the madly approaching Camila, increasing in frequency until she was nearly upon the monster.

In the same instant that the Berserker would have cut into the Shade Walker, a cloud of shadows erupted from it, plunging them both into darkness. The darkness rushed out towards Ty before surging back in on itself. The monster appeared where its magic coalesced, wisps of black miasma still clinging to it.

The Shade Walker launched a ball of black miasma at the Defender. Ty tanked it with a grunt, causing the magic to dissipate on his shield with one of his skills.

Christopher retaliated with bolts of shaped arcane miasma. They were enough to do some damage, but not much.

Kenneth’s Fireball was much more effective. It took a while to cast and it was difficult to control, but that didn’t matter when Christopher could guide the spell straight into the monster as it attempted to dodge away.

Allen’s eyes were still on the false shadows though. His mouth quirked when he noticed them shift again, then again, then a third time.

He looked up and squinted into the Shade Walker’s magical gloom. A blur caught his eye, the result of the Gloom Caster trying to keep its hallucinogenic camouflage in effect while it moved. The very obvious shimmer moving in his direction though immediately broke the illusion for Allen. He saw it clearly, exactly where it should be; the illusion no longer had any effect on him.

Name: Gloom Caster

Lesser Undead – Monster – Level 68

He let it scramble past him, running at Christopher, Amelia, and Kenneth while Ty and Camila where occupied with the Shade Walker. He jumped out from under the rock an instant later and darted after it.

The Gloom Caster suddenly screeched as it sprinted towards Amelia’s back. Both Mages and the Healer spun around in surprise, but they were too late to react. The Caster was fast, but not for its level. Allen slammed into it from behind, both his skills activating to deal devastating damage to the monster’s upper back. Black blood spurted out from a hole in its chest and its right arm had been completely blown off.

“The Caster!” Christopher shouted.

It was too tall for Allen to reach its neck, but his attack had knocked it over. He quickly wretched his knife out of its back and jumped off before it could retaliate against him.

The Gloom Caster screeched and hissed, but it no longer had control over the lower half of its body. It could only thrash around on the ground with its one remaining arm. It hissed one last time before Camila smashed its head into the ground with a snarl, finishing it off.

She glanced over at Allen before her morning star disappeared back into her inventory.

The Shade Walker wasn’t faring so well against two Mages with Ty in between them. Without the threat of any more monsters, it only took the group a few more moments to corner it between spells, Ty’s shield, and Camila’s reckless attacks.

Allen circled behind the monster and stabbed it through the neck, breaking its vertebra as Assassinate activated. Even with just the fifty percent bonus that came from attacking while outside of his enemy’s line of sight, the attack was still enough to interrupt it.

Camila ran it through with her greatsword, then lifted the skewered monster over her head and smashed it into the ground. It hissed one final time before succumbing to its destroyed body.

Allen let out a deep breath and waited a moment, but no messages came. He looked over at the others as Camila grunted to herself. They all seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

“Only the boss is left,” Allen said.

They nodded and looked over in the direction of the red light. It was closer than before. A deep crimson that was bright enough then to light up most of the cavern around them without the monsters interfering.

“W-what do you think it is?” Kenneth asked dumbly.

Everything Kenneth did or said was dumb, which Allen thought was suspicious. He smiled to himself, but it wasn’t a humorous smile.

“Uh, I dunno man. A crystal or something probably,” Ty replied, stretching his back, “I haven’t been in very many dungeons.”

“There is only one way to find out,” Christopher said, smirking at his own cliché.